The Annals of Darkness: Garden of Snow and Ice
by Shire Folk
Summary: Injured during the Zeus Cup, Kairi is left behind in Radiant Garden while she heals. Trouble is, it's winter, and Destiny Islands isn't the best place to grow up if you like the cold. But at least she's got friends to help her get through it all.
1. Snow

_I know that you guys deserve an update in the actual story and not more filler stuff, and I swear that I am working on the real story, but the thing is I've been working on about four chapters of that thing simultaneously as well as this mini-series while also having to deal with school and work and finding a real job and everything else life is throwing my way including my sister's coming first baby. She thinks it's a boy, and she and my brother-in-law have thought up the names Hunter, Colton, and one other name that I can't remember but is much better than Colton. No offence to any Coltons out there, but I just don't like the name and would never name a son of mine Colton. Oh, just remembered the other boy's name which was better than Colton, Jackson. Hunter or Jackson, for sure. Colton? No. Please Chris, don't name your son, if you indeed have a son, Colton. Her due date's the 7th of April, by the way._

_Setting: Radiant Garden, after Chapter 55: It's On in __**The War**__._

_Essentially this is a mini-series concerning Kairi's time in Radiant Garden between December 1__st__ when everyone runs off to fight evil, and December 7__th __when everyone comes back for reasons I shall leave you in the dark for at the moment. It will definitely not be as long as the similar timeframe of __**A Week of Troubles**__. Expect 5-7 chapters total; I mean it!_

-A-D-

**The Annals of Darkness**

**Garden of Snow and Ice**

Snow

"I still don't know how you managed to drag me into this," Kairi muttered, a picnic basket hooked into the bend in her cast on her left arm while her right was holding up a hangar with a puffy black and orange coat on it.

"Because you scared us all to death earlier, that's how," Selphie answered in her forest green trench coat. "Ooh, this yellow and white one looks nice."

"No, it doesn't work with Kairi's hair," Olette surmised, "the yellow's too bright." She pulled another coat from the rack. "How about this Kairi?"

The Princess wrinkled her nose at it. "Uh… it's nice, but I don't do baby blue Olette." Shrugging, the girl replaced the coat on the rack and Kairi returned her attentions to looking around the sporting goods store they were in.

Selphie and Olette weren't the only ones she was with. Tidus, Wakka, Hayner, and Pence were all with her as well, each and every one of them looking for winter clothing for the Princess to wear. Well, the males _would_ have been with her, had they not been shooed away to go off on their own until they were called for so that the girls could reveal the 'winterized' Kairi and they could be dazzled.

Kairi picked up another one, looking at the crimson nylon that covered the expanse of the coat. "Why do people get these anyway?" she asked.

Olette tisked at Kairi's naïve ignorance. "So that people can go out in the winter when it's cold, Princess Sunshine," she answered, rolling her eyes. "You can't expect everyone to just hunker down and not go outside at all, can you?"

"Yes. And after what I just went through, I don't think I'll ever be going outside when it's below zero again, nor will I _ever_ understand how Naminé can choose to willingly play around with blizzard magic like she does," Kairi returned.

"And what happens if you go to a world that's covered in glaciers or you have to scale a frigid mountain?" Olette retorted.

"Easy," Kairi answered, "I'll melt it all or I'll fly over it or I'll just wrap myself in fire until Sora finishes whatever we're supposed to do and he comes back to get me."

"That's being really childish Kairi," Selphie told her. "Ooh, this one's cute," she declared, snatching a winter coat that was both hot pink and black.

"No," Kairi answered, shaking her head at the coat. Selphie looked at it mournfully for a second before placing it back on the rack.

"So you'd let Sora handle everything by himself?" Olette asked, pursing her lips and moving over to another rack.

Guilt wriggled like a worm in Kairi's belly and she tried to squash it. "I don't ever want to be so cold again," she said, remembering what had happened to her just a short while ago.

Kairi had left the castle with the picnic basket that was hanging on her arm around mid-afternoon. The basket was filled with plates full of the cookies she'd been helping to bake earlier, and it had taken her three baskets to get the fire spell she'd used, which warmed the basket with continuous heat so that the cookies would always be warm and oven-fresh if not oven-hot, correct. The three previous baskets were now being used as kindling.

She'd made it out of the castle courtyard fine, but walking down the sides of the road into the city and towards the mall and shops where she wanted to leave the cookies so that shopkeepers and their employees and customers could enjoy the Christmas cookies too had been a very different experience for Kairi. She'd never had to concern herself with the intricacies of walking on snow or ice, and it was minus twelve degrees Celsius outside with a wind chill of minus eighteen and light flurries.

She'd only been wearing her blue jeans, boots (which proved to be a blessing compared to the shoes she might have otherwise put on), and a t-shirt underneath her red sweater, and what Kairi considered cold was positive four degrees. Slipping on ice and falling down had been the least of her troubles despite the pain those falls had given her when her ribs pointedly reminded her that they _didn't_ like her falling down. The biting cold wind that tore through her sweater and froze her fingers, chest, face, and ears wasn't the worst either. The worst came when she'd made the mistake of trying to cut across a park to get to the mall faster.

Having had little experience with snow before, she'd miscalculated how deep the snow beside the sidewalk was. It had only looked to be about ankle-deep to her, the same depth that she was already walking in. The creation of the snowpack under her feet had also given her the impression that walking on snow was like walking on sand. So she'd taken a step off the beaten path to cross the park.

Her foot sank into the snow and she toppled over and into the ditch. The snow was really as high as her waist.

That was the moment when she'd been defeated by the winter of Radiant Garden, when the cold and snow almost claimed her and put her to permanent sleep. If not for her Keyblade's timely interruption and shouting at her not to fall asleep, she probably would never have been able to create a cocoon of fire to protect herself with. She still stung that Flame continued to call her 'Idiot Girl'.

That was how Abel Company had found her minutes later. It took a whole section of their magic users to wrestle control of the flames away from Kairi, and when they did they'd found her sleeping and still pretty cold. An hour later the princess had woken up in Abel Company HQ, and after assuring them that she was fine, Selphie, Hayner, and Pence petitioned to take her shopping for winter clothes so that an incident like the one that had just occurred would not occur again.

They'd received permission immediately, provided that Kairi leave a plate of the shortbread Christmas cookies with the company, which she did. Easy and Baker weren't tasked to do anything, so Wakka, Tidus, and Olette were able to tag along.

"What about this one?" Selphie asked, placing a black one with yellow accents on the zipper guard and under the arms, all with white trim, in front of Kairi. "Hm?"

Olette shook her head. "I still think the yellow doesn't work," she answered.

"The yellow's an accent for this one with the black being the main colour," Selphie disagreed. "I think it'd look cool on Kairi."

Kairi looked helplessly at the two for a moment before reaching out a hand and grabbing one more off the rack. "I like this one," she declared, looking at the warm winter coat. The main body was white as snow, not entirely a colour she wanted to be reminded of, with a fuchsia band on the sides of the sleeves, upper chest and upper back. Underneath the arms and under the zipper guard the colour was that of steel; it was bright, but different enough from white to offset it.

Selphie squealed, "Well, try it on!"

Kairi sighed slightly. "Fine. Olette, hold the cookies." The brunette took hold of the basket and Kairi shoved her right arm through the sleeve. She tried for a minute to get her left arm through the other one, but her cast refused to bend enough, so she let the sleeve hang limp at her side while wrapping the jacket over her shoulder. The Dragon Knight fumbled for a few seconds with the zipper before managing to get it to start zipping. The insulation of the jacket pressed against her cast and sweater and t-shirt underneath. It felt like it was squeezing her gently, just like Sora's arms, and she could already feel slightly warmer.

However, when she looked down Kairi couldn't help but frown slightly. "I feel like a marshmallow," she said, "a one-armed Easter egg marshmallow."

Olette and Selphie laughed. "But you like it, right?"

"I guess it'll do…"

"Great, now let's get you loaded with snow pants, snow boots, mitts, a scarf and a hat."

"What?" Kairi asked with wild eyes.

"Winter newbie gets the works," Olette told her with an amused smile. "You can afford all of this, right?"

-A-D-

An hour and a half later Selphie ran through the mall, completely in defiance of the good discipline demanded of her by the uniform she was still wearing. Tidus, Wakka, Hayner, and Pence were all rounded up and escorted back to the store, and they all smiled approvingly at Kairi's new winter outfit as she came out of the dressing rooms.

They had gone with the white, fuchsia, and steel coloured ski jacket (guaranteed to minus thirty-five, so the tag said), along with a pair of snow white snow pants. Kairi had flat-out refused to wear the overall ones, so they'd been forced to go with ones that had an elastic waist (not that they were going to go with the overalls anyway, but it had been fun to horrify her with them). Her own boots, while providing her decent enough support, grip, and stability, just didn't have the insulation to keep her feet warm enough and so were replaced with white snow boots that extended to a few inches beneath her knees. Black mitts that could be flipped up by undoing the Velcro to reveal bare fingertips of hands otherwise sheathed in black cotton would cover her hands. She wore a raspberry beret, and a scarf that alternated between black and crimson bands. No matter how many times Olette said that her ears would freeze if she wore the beret instead of a hat Kairi stubbornly held onto the beret. As soon as she'd laid eyes on the raspberry coloured headdress with black trim she'd fallen in love with it and there would be hell to pay if she was denied it. So what if the red played off her hair, the black trim was more than enough compensation in her eyes.

"I _still_ feel like a marshmallow," Kairi muttered, now that she had their attention.

"But a _warm_ marshmallow," Olette corrected her, moving towards Kairi's left side to push the armless sleeve back in through the hole. Kairi's casted left arm was hiding underneath the jacket.

"Hey, lookin' good Kairi," Wakka told her, Tidus wolf-whistling beside him. The tiny frown on the princess' face couldn't help but turn into a smile. She laughed a little and twirled around before striking a pose with her hand on her hip. Pence snapped a photo of her with his camera.

"Definitely keeping this one," he said, giving her a thumbs-up.

"Let me see let me see," Kairi insisted, quickly coming to him to take a peek in the camera. Pence cheekily held it up behind his head.

"Sorry Kairi," he said, "but I'm still one of those old fogies that use film. You aren't seeing this until it gets developed."

"Dang it," Kairi muttered, mock fuming to the others' amusement. "Well, it had better be a pretty good picture Pence, because I want it."

"I'll make sure I keep the negatives," Pence told her, putting the camera safely back in a pocket in his green trench coat.

"Alright," Selphie said. "Let's pay for this stuff and get you out in the snow." Before Kairi could even answer, Selphie stopped her with a hand. "And NO! You can't say 'no' Kairi. I hated the snow and cold just as much when it started, but unlike you, I've learned to deal with it and have fun. Now it's your turn. Olette, you may have to warm the snow up some, but we're having a snowball fight that would make even bad bones Maleficent crack a smile."

"I doubt that she would smile for anything less than me or Sora," Kairi answered, "dead."

"Hey, don't be a pessimist," Hayner said. "I'm pretty sure that simply torturing you would make her smile. She wouldn't have to right-out kill you for that."

"That makes me feel _soo_ much better Hayner," Kairi informed him, rolling her eyes and bringing her right hand to the zipper of her jacket.

A couple of minutes later Kairi had removed all of the winter clothing she'd put on and was carrying it all up to the tills at the front of the store. Olette was still holding onto her picnic basket. The line wasn't that long, but the woman at the front of the line was holding everything up with a complicated return/purchase/exchange that required the store manager to come and try to sort things out peacefully. Apparently you couldn't return an item after you'd already worn and washed it and forgot the receipt.

Kairi rolled her eyes again with her lips pursed thinly in annoyance. _Of course_ you couldn't return something to a store if you'd already worn and washed the item and removed the tags; it's no longer in the same condition as it was when the store sold it! Shaking her head, Kairi tried to ignore it and listen to the music playing through the store, swaying along slightly.

"…_Dreams are calling,  
>Like bells in the distance.<em>

_We were dreamers,  
>Not so long ago.<br>But one by one we,  
>All had to grow up.<em>

_When it seems the magic slipped away,  
>We find it all again on Christmas Day.<em>

_Believe in what your heart is saying;  
>Hear the melody that's playing.<br>There's no time to waste;  
>There's so much to celebrate.<br>Believe in what you feel inside,  
>And give your dreams the wings to flyyyyyyy!<br>You have everything you need,  
>If you just believe…"<em>

The woman left in a huff after only a couple of minutes arguing with the manager and complaining about the cashier who was standing with a shocked look on her face only a couple of steps away. The rest of the line in front of Kairi had moved to the next till over, so Kairi and Olette proceeded up to the till. Kairi gave the girl running the register a sincere smile and glanced at the back of the woman angrily striding out of the store. "Oh, I'm glad I don't work retail even though I still have to deal with idiots occasionally," she said. All she had to do was remember Sobel, the douche.

The girl returned with a faint laugh. "True that," she said while Kairi placed her items on the counter. "Find everything O.K.?"

Kairi nodded and started digging into her purse. "Yeah, I did."

The manager leaned towards the girl and whispered into her ear, but Kairi still heard what he said. "Don't charge her."

The auburn-haired teen looked up as her hand froze in her purse, and the cashier looked at her boss in confusion. "Uh… why?" she asked.

"That's the Princess," replied the manager. The cashier looked back at Kairi for a second or two, then recognition burst onto her face and it looked like she was about to scream, "Oh Holy Light!"

Kairi was quick to nip that in the bud before it even got out of her mouth. "So what if I'm the Princess?" she asked. "Right now I'm a customer, aren't I? I don't expect to be treated any differently from any other customer."

"But you're the Princess, Your Highness," said the manager. "You don't have to pay for anything. Consider your purchases a gift."

"No!" Kairi answered. "I don't want to feel like I'm getting stuff for free just because of my blood. If I was actually born to my parents from Destiny Islands, you'd be charging me full price. I want to pay. It's a fair trade; I won't be feeling like I'm cheating you out of crap and you'll be making a profit."

"We can't take your munny," the manager said again. "I insist. They're a gift."

Kairi felt like screaming. Dammit, she was being just as difficult as the last customer, only in the opposite sense.

"Kairi…?"

She didn't even register who it was that had said her name, and she probably shouldn't have exploded, but she did. "I am **not** a charity!" she shouted at the manager. "I don't _care_ that I'm the Princess! I don't _care_ that I've been orphaned twice now! I have the munny I need to pay for what I want to buy. Please just take it like you would anyone else. Just let me feel like a normal teenager again for a little while!"

She didn't realize where any of that came from, but as soon as the words left her mouth she knew that they were true. Tears were threatening to come out from her eyes and Kairi ducked her head so that they couldn't see her cry. She sniffled.

Selphie was suddenly in front of her with her face right in the manager's. "You have to understand," she said forcibly, "we've lived our whole lives believing that we're normal people. It's only recently that her life has changed to make her really important to lots of people. We've grown up under the impression that we'd go to school and university and become doctors or lawyers or Guardians or trades people, this is a _huge_ change."

"Royalty doesn't pay," the manager insisted, though he appeared quite shaken.

"Well at least let me give you _something_!" Kairi countered. "Olette." The brunette nodded and opened the lid on the picnic basket. Selphie turned around and pulled a plate of the shortbread cookies out of the basket. "I originally came out today to give out the cookies I helped bake from my mother's secret shortbread Christmas cookie recipe. They're for your staff and customers to have."

"You baked your Christmas shortbread cookies?" Tidus asked excitedly. He turned to Hayner. "Dude, how come you didn't tell me what that basket was for!"

"Are they really that good?" Hayner asked.

Tidus nodded emphatically. He looked over to the plate and his eyes glazed over. "And you iced them too! They were really good with the icing last year. What icing did you—?"

"Homemade buttermilk icing," Kairi said proudly, wiping her eyes with her right hand. "And there are more cookies in there than just the shortbread ones, it's just that those were the only ones I worked on."

Selphie smacked Tidus' reaching hand away. "Hey! These ones are for this store. We've got a plate in our company mess."

"But I'm not _in_ your company!" Tidus protested.

Kairi smiled at him. "All you have to do is ask Tidus, and you can take a plate of them back to Easy Company."

"SWEET!"

"Same for me, ya?" Wakka asked with a cheeky grin. Kairi giggled and nodded.

"Planning on sharing some of the cookies with the rest of Easy Tidus?" Olette asked.

"No way Forrest! They're mine!"

"You fat pig," mocked Olette.

The cashier basically stepped back with her hands in front of her, looking to her manager for guidance. The man appeared to only be around twenty-three himself, so he was also at a bit of a loss. Nervously afraid of the Princess possibly blowing up again, he reached forward and picked up a cookie.

"I can cook," Kairi told him irritatedly, folding her right arm onto her cast, "and bake. I'm not some useless dingbat Princess who can't do shit to save her life." The manager's eyes widened slightly at her swear before he bit into the cookie.

They brightened immediately and he chewed a little before swallowing. "Payment accepted Your Highness," he told her, bowing slightly. Kairi nodded her head and smiled at him.

"Make sure you offer some to your customers," she told him while scooping her 'purchases' up in her arms. She picked up the raspberry beret first and placed that back on her head. Selphie fixed it up for her while Kairi grabbed the rest.

-A-D-

A couple hours later they had traversed through the entirety of the mall, giving out the remaining plates of cookies to their favourite stores, and Kairi had purposely tried to avoid Cloti's Closet regardless of what Yuffie had told her, but as soon as Selphie and Olette motioned that they should go in, the poor Princess was doomed to oblige.

She did use the excuse to her advantage though, and picked up the items Yuffie'd suggested she try out. She couldn't _wait_ for Sora to get back, and it hadn't even been a full day yet!

"Alright!" Selphie said when they were finished, "now let's go out and part-ay! Snowball! Snowball! Snowball! Fi-ight! Fi-ight! Fi-ight! What's that spell?"

"SNOWBALL FIGHT!" Hayner, Pence, Tidus, and Wakka crowed.

Kairi laughed and shook her head while Olette still hung on to the picnic basket, now containing only two of the dozen plates stacked full of cookies; one for Easy Company and one for Baker Company, since Abel already had theirs as thanks for saving her from the snow and cold. "Whatever, help me get this stuff back on," she said, putting down her bags from SportGarden and Cloti's Closet and pulling out the ski jacket she'd gotten.

A couple of minutes later she was back outside, only this time wearing her new winter ensemble. Already the wind was stinging her eyes and ears and the top of her cheeks, but beyond that, she couldn't feel the cold anywhere else on her body. The light wind and cold air didn't have the strength to cut through the insulation on her ski jacket, even counting the massive zipper on the front, and all she could feel on her legs and hands was that same slight wind pushing against the fabric without actually going through too well. The scarf that was on her neck and chin and the tip of her nose also held back the wind and cold air, even though it now felt completely weird to Kairi as she inhaled almost the same air she was exhaling.

"So, how's winter now Kairi?" Hayner asked, dropping his beret to cover the tops of his ears while hunching up a little more in his trench coat.

Kairi pulled down the top of her scarf. "It feels better," she said, looking out at the streets and snow in the golden lamplight from the streetlights. "Much better, actually, like it's not as cold as I remember it being earlier."

"All you had on was a simple sweater earlier," Olette said with a faint smile. "You were not prepared. Now you are. Winter's a cold-hearted bitch if you don't know her, but once you do…"

"She's still a cold-hearted bitch," Hayner finished, "but at least you're able to have fun with her."

"Right," Olette laughed, pulling her little staff out from inside of her trench coat. She pointed it at a nearby pile of snow and said, "Fire." Raw heat radiated out from the tip of the magic weapon, and after a few seconds the snow looked like it was sweating.

"That should be enough," Pence said, stepping in the path of the heat before Olette cut it off in order to test the snow. He dipped a hand into it, then scooped some up with a smile on his face. "Yeah, this is the good stuff right here: nice and moist and sticky."

"Have I mentioned before that I'm not too fond of this idea?" Kairi asked, taking a step back as Hayner and Olette each crouched down now and began scooping up some of the snow.

"Too bad Kairi," Wakka said, smirking, "because it's happening, ya? Oh, wish we coulda found Charlie or Vivi before we started this, then we coulda had even teams."

"What makes you think we need them?" Hayner asked. "The three of us can take you guys on no problem." And to prove it, he chucked his first perfect snowball at Wakka's head.

The ginger ducked, the missile just missing his head. Selphie shrieked as Olette hit her chest with a snowball at point blank range. "Wah! No fair! You've got a monopoly on the good snow!" Tidus grabbed Selphie's arm and yanked her back.

"Run!" he yelled, turning around as Pence let one fly, just missing Tidus' side due to the boy's turn. Kairi wasted no time in following as the four of them sped away from the three Twilight Towners.

"Dang it," Wakka said, glancing around. "We got no snow!"

"And I couldn't even make a snowball if I tried anyway," Kairi added. "I can only use ONE hand!"

"Quick! To the park!" Selphie ordered. "We'll use the snow covering the ground there!"

"How?" asked Tidus. "None of us know magic!"

Kairi felt like smacking him. "Hey!" she shouted.

"Oops, sorry Kai."

"You'd better be sorry," she huffed. A snowball whizzed past her ear and Kairi ducked away, a bit of adrenaline pumping into her veins at the feel of being under fire from snow-packed ordinance. She laughed at the feeling, her hot breath coming out in a cloud in front of her.

The four Islanders leapt over the snow-covered ditch and landed in varying states on the other side. Kairi's feet didn't land right on the perfectly level surface and fell back into the ditch, but this time she wasn't bothered so much by the cold snow that stuck to her hair as she was by the painful smack her injured ribs sent her brain for falling down again. About twenty metres away to her left was a patch of ground covered by a thin dusting of the white powder that had fallen after she'd melted it all away.

Ignoring that, Kairi took Wakka's hand while still holding onto her two bags as he reached down to help her up and ducked again as another couple of snowballs flew in around them and missed. Tidus jumped the short chain-link fence and Kairi followed, with Selphie beside her and Wakka bringing up the rear. The snow they landed in was almost shin-deep, and it was a bit of a chore to move in it.

"Now what?" Wakka asked, looking behind them as Olette, Hayner, and Pence caught up to them on the other side of the chain-link fence and scaled it. Olette was already softening the snow closest to the three best used to winter. It was darker here, with only the light from the streetlights filtering in from the road and none placed out where they were. Visibility in the darkness wasn't too great, and the snow was still coming down gently.

It was perfect.

Tidus made a hand signal that Kairi didn't understand, but that Selphie and Wakka apparently did and the three of them fanned out. Shaking her head slightly, Kairi placed her free right hand out in front of her, watching as Olette continued to warm up and slowly melt the snow around herself and her two companions so that they could use it as easy ammunition. "I'll show you not to play around with me when it comes to fire magic Olette," Kairi said with a big grin.

She dropped her bags and red light seeped out of the black glove on her hand, and she instantly felt her fingers warming back up to the temperature they had been before they left the mall. They hadn't dropped much, temperature-wise, but they were still a bit colder than they had been before. Kairi waved her hand in front of her horizontally in broad arcs, the red glow staying in the air where she'd passed her hand over. Once she was done the fifth arc Kairi let out an exclamation of, "_Alcië_!" and the strokes of red light dove into the snow. Immediately the snow around them began to hiss and steam rose from below. The snow level dropped to about half its previous height and became more condensed, and Kairi snapped her hand out to her side with the word, "Freeze." The steam stopped rising.

Tidus bent down first, and found the snow not too warm and slushy that it would make a wet snowball like some of the ones the Twilight Towners were making, but also not so cold that it wouldn't stick together unless packed together with lots and lots of snow. Essentially it was perfect snow, the type of snow that snow cones could technically be made out of or that snowmen and snow sculptures were created from. Children's snow and builder's snow…

Snowball snow. And the Islanders were surrounded by it while the Twilight Towners weren't. Olette and Pence just weren't that good, despite their huge superiority when it came to winter knowledge.

Tidus and Wakka hastily dropped down and started making snowballs at a rapid pace, only taking a second on each one before placing them in neat piles and moving on to the next. Kairi grabbed the first one that was ready and threw, knowing already that her aim was off in the low light and being out of balance with her left arm tucked in close to her belly. It fell five feet away from Olette, crashing down and kicking up a spray of white powder.

"Missed me Kairi!" Olette called, scooping up some of her own mix of melted snow and snow and forming it into a ball. Kairi jumped away from Tidus as Hayner chucked one towards the two of them, and it just missed her while missing the blond by a mile. Kairi ran, her hand glowing with red light again as she waved it around. The park was large, with tonnes and tonnes of snow to utilize.

"_Alcië_!" she shouted, sending the waves of unshaped fire down into the snow to cause part of it to melt and steam. "Freeze! Oof!"

Pence had lobbed a snowball at her and it had nailed the auburn-haired, raspberry-bereted Princess in the side of her chest as she turned. Kairi stopped and looked at it for a second as tiny pieces of the snowball remained sticking to her ski jacket while the rest fell away to the ground. It was strange. The snow was plastering itself right up against her jacket, and yet, its coldness wasn't getting through to her at all. In fact, she even felt warm right now; and not the sleepy warm either. She was warm and energetic and a little cold all at the same time! It was a strange feeling.

"You're going down Hayner!" Tidus called, tossing a missile at the blond Struggler.

"Corporal Tidus I'll have you written up for assaulting a superi—" Hayner began in good fun before he got a face-full of snow.

"Boo-yah!" Wakka crowed, having pitched that one straight for the blond's head. "Hey Sergeant Garneky, what was that about hitting a higher-rank?"

"Let's get 'em guys!" Selphie cheered.

"Right back at ya," Pence replied, tossing one her way. The girl shrieked and dropped flat on the snow-covered ground, the snowball just whizzing over her shoulders.

"Guys back here!" Kairi called, beckoning with her hand. The shapes that were Selphie, Tidus, and Wakka rushed back to where Kairi was standing, and the Princess of Heart pushed outward with her hand. Three orbs of white light emerged in bright flashes and rocketed off towards Hayner, Pence, and Olette, stunning everyone with their brightness, before they hovered about four metres above each of the Twilight Town teens and one metre in front of them.

Kairi raised her hand now, and a good portion of the perfect snow she'd developed, as well as the snowballs already made by Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie, _dragged_ itself back towards them, rising to create packed walls as thick as Kairi's fist and as high as Wakka's neck in most places in a circular fort twenty paces in diameter, with snow still beneath their feet ready to be used to either patch up the defences or create additional ammunition. There were only two entrances, one at the front and one on the right (facing front), and both were only wide enough for one person to enter or exit

Selphie gaped in awe for a second as Kairi sighed and slumped down, falling back on her butt. "Kairi!" she said in amazement. "I didn't know you could do this!"

"Just because I don't particularly _like_ blizzard magic doesn't mean I suck at it Selphie," she answered with a chuckle. She waved her hand once more, and a small, softly glowing white orb formed slowly and hovered in the air near her head, illuminating the 'inside' of the circular snow fort. Kairi reached a hand down into her purse and pulled out a blue cube. She didn't even look at it before smashing it into her face, sighing as she felt the energy return to her. "But, Naminé's much better with it than I am."

"Uh," Hayner began from the opposite side of the wall, "I think we're gonna need backup for this one guys."

"Yeah, that's right!" Wakka jeered. "Ain't no way you guys comin' in here!"

"We've got you beat!" Tidus cheered.

"Oh yeah?" Hayner asked. "Think you're all that? Well I'm taking off and coming back here with my whole section, maybe even my whole platoon! How are you gonna like _them_ apples?"

"I'm in your damn section Hayner and if you and Pence bring 1st Platoon back here then I'm gonna go and talk to Lieutenant Rokan and Second Lieutenant Meehan and get both 2nd _and_ 3rd Platoon on your ass! Isil will take you down." Selphie retorted.

"And I'll bring all of Baker down on you!" Wakka added.

"And half of Easy," said Tidus, "since Olette's probably going to win over the other half."

They could just barely see Olette's facial expression in the light coming off of Kairi's conjured orbs. "Half?" she asked, amused, "the only ones you'll be able to sway, Tidus, are Marble, Melbourne, Anar, Kia, and maybe Jeff. But, Jeff's in my platoon, so he may even come with me, just like the rest of Easy."

"What makes you think you'll get the rest of the whole fricking company?"

"I've got Kairi's cookies and if I'm able to get Holmes and Woods to come with me, well, you know what will happen when 3rd Platoon's Femme Magic Trinity are on the move." Tidus rolled his eyes.

"Well if you guys do that," Kairi added, "then _I'm_ going to call in Captain Beagle and my Royal Guard and we'll lay the smack down!"

"Isn't that only like, twenty guys?" Wakka asked.

Kairi was flustered for only a moment. "Yeah, so? They're the _best_."

Tidus harrumphed. "Easy's the best."

Kairi raised her hand in front of her and a mist of white light formed above her hand. "Captain Beagle," she said, recording a message in the light, "gather your men and meet me in Rockshaw Park in forty-five minutes, ready to defend your Princess and win snowball _glory_!" She stopped speaking and the mist became yet another ball of light and shot into the sky.

-A-D-

Hours later Kairi returned to the castle, carrying her shopping bags and surrounded by the twenty-odd soldiers and officers under the command of Captain Nikolev Beagle that made up the entire 8th Royal Guards Regiment. It was rather sad when she thought about it, but that issue would probably be rectified in the coming years. She was cold and wet and warm and tired and happy all at the same time; her cheeks were ruby red and snow caked her raspberry beret, hair, gloves and scarf and clung to her ski jacket, boots, and snow pants. But all the same, even though it was probably on the wrong side of ten o'clock, Kairi had no desire in her to go to bed yet.

She was greeted by Christmas as soon as she and he guard entered the castle. Boughs of holly were hanging high up on the walls and along the railings. Massive snowflakes hanging down on silver strings were strung from the ceiling, and there were even dual shawls of silver and red tinsel wrapping around the dry arms of the mermaid in the fountain at the base of the stairs. A big great Christmas Tree was up, but it didn't have any lights or tinsel or garlands or beads or baubles or any sort of decorations on it yet. Christmas music was still playing on a concealed intercom radio system that Kairi had yet to locate the speakers for, but she was glad that the tune welcoming her was Johnny Mathis singing _It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas_.

"…_glistening once again,  
>With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.<br>It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas;  
>Toys in ev'ry store.<br>But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be  
>On your own front door."<em>

"Kairi!" exclaimed a much less musical voice, though one the princess found no less pleasant. Menelmon flew out of her perch in the tree and landed right on the girl's shoulder. Kairi laughed and hugged the bird with her one good arm while Menelmon rubbed her cheek against Kairi's ruby red one. "You're back. You were gone a long time."

Kairi grinned. "I know. I ended up going shopping with the gang and got in a big snowball fight."

"Yeah!" PFC Trent roared, sticking his fist in the air, "and we kicked tail! The Crown!"

"HAS FANGS!" chorused the rest of the company.

Kairi turned slightly to look at her guard with a confused expression on her face. "You know, you guys have shouted that about fifteen times tonight and I still have no idea what you mean when you say it."

Captain Beagle chuckled slightly, the man in his early forties lightly patting her back. "Well, the story goes like this," he told her. "About, oh, two hundred years ago just after your family was able to join the fractured kingdoms of the world together into one is when it happened. Most of the kingdoms had joined through diplomatic treaties and the other two nations were gained through conquest, and I think it was because of the conquests that this happened. But anyway, this noble, Duke Boras Levistan if I remember correctly, started trying to incite a rebellion against the new King of the world because he wasn't doing things in ways he liked, probably in ways that lost the Duke munny or some of his lands, and went to the King to inform him of his intent to take the crown if his demands weren't met.

"Well, story goes he never met the King, but was instead stopped by a Sergeant from the 8th Royal Guards. When the Duke told the sergeant of his plan to seize the crown and that he must be let through to inform the King of his opposition, the sergeant quietly had him surrounded and said, 'Well, there's a little problem with that plan of yours. You see, if anyone tries to snatch the crown off of the King's head, he's going to find out that the Crown's got some pretty big fangs that'll bite back. We're them.' And he and his men picked up the Duke and tossed him into the moat; the castle had a moat back then. Duke Levistan's rebellion never happened. That's what we in the 8th mean when we say that the Crown has Fangs, it's got us."

Kairi laughed. "That's cocky; I like it. And you know what else I like? Hot chocolate! Let's go and get some."

"That's the spirit Your Highness," said Marie Namis.

"Me too?" asked Menelmon. Kairi laughed again.

"Yes Menelmon," she said, stroking her digimon partner's head, "you too. Oh, I should probably call Sora too." Kairi brought her right hand out in front of her and unzipped her ski jacket before stopping. Her guard stopped around her, and Kairi shook her head dismissively as she kicked at her feet. "No, you guys go on ahead," she told them, gesturing at the large wooden doors on the level above the golden mermaid fountain. "But, uh… Jenkins, could you go and tell Helia and the cooks that we're looking for some hot chocolate and some of the cookies we baked this afternoon?"

"Sure thing," said the woman. "Sheesh, just because I guarded you when you were arrested I end up getting all the unpleasant jobs," she chuckled.

"I'll turn a blind eye if you should sneak a cookie or two."

-A-D-

_Well, that was the first chapter of this one. She starts off hating the snow and cold, and now Kairi's gained respect for and an appreciation of it. I hope you all enjoyed it._

_Now for the translation:_

_Alcië (Quintessence: Fire)_

_**May the Grace of the Valar Protect You**_

_Shire Folk_


	2. If Only

_Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, Disney, Final Fantasy, or anything else related to those things with trademarks and copy write protection._

**Garden of Snow and Ice**

If Only…

"Kairi, am I seeing things, or are you wearing a raspberry beret?"

The auburn-haired Princess of Radiant Garden giggled and waved her feet behind her head, lying on her bed with pink flannel pyjamas on her body and the beret she'd bought earlier in the day topping her head. She cocked her head slightly to the side and smiled at the face on the small screen in front of her. "Why? Too artsy for you Sora?"

Hey boyfriend laughed on the other end of the communicator. "No, it's cool. It just reminded me of something."

"What did it remind you of Keys?" Menelmon asked, the bird digimon sitting next to her digidestined partner while Aiwemon roosted on Sora's shoulder.

"Prince," Sora answered simply.

Kairi frowned. "Prince?" she asked. Sora couldn't help but smile and he began to sway his shoulders a little bit, upsetting Aiwemon very slightly.

"_She wore a raspberry beret,  
>The kind you find in a second-hand store.<br>Raspberry beret;  
>And if it was warm, she wouldn't wear much more.<br>Raspberry beret;  
>I think I looove her.<em>"

Kairi blushed and buried her head in a pillow and Sora laughed. "You know, Prince, the guy who wrote the song called _Raspberry Beret_?"

"Shut up," Kairi mumbled. "Now you're going to get that chorus stuck in my head, and I didn't even _know_ that there was a song called that."

"Well now you do Kairi," said Sora.

"Humans are weird," Aiwemon blurted out, causing all three of the others to laugh.

"Well digimon are pretty strange too," Kairi told him. "You won't find a lot of humans who have bottomless pits for stomachs like you digimon do."

"Hey that's just him and Gomamon," Menelmon said, "don't go lumping me in with pigs like them."

"Patamon's the real pig," Aiwemon muttered.

Kairi shook her head. "Sorry Menelmon, but your argument doesn't hold. I've seen you eat; maybe not quite as much as Aiwemon, but you do still eat a lot."

"Kairi are you calling me fat? I need to keep my strength up in case I need to protect you at a moment's notice."

The princess laughed. "Menel we're safe in the castle, we don't need to worry about being attacked at a moment's notice."

The words had hardly left her mouth when her door banged open so fast and so loudly that she was afraid for a moment that it would break off its hinges. Kairi's heart leapt to her throat as she and Menelmon whirled around, Menelmon already shouting, "Ice Feathers!" and about to fling her wing towards whatever was in the doorway.

Kairi belayed that an instant later upon recognizing the man in the door. "Mast—Garda don't DO that!" she yelped, her adrenaline jolt slowly coming down as the burst of fear and combat readiness subsided. "Knock on my door! Knock next time! What if I had been changing and you'd just walked in on me naked? What then?"

"Well then I'm sure some people would get embarrassed," Garda told her, stepping aside to reveal a few other people outside her door: King Mickey, Lord Ramius, and Kensworth.

Kairi looked curiously as the three stepped into her room after her former master. "What's going on?" Sora asked.

"Oh, you're talking to Sora," King Mickey noticed. "Good. How are things out there Sora?"

The brunet shook his head. "Not good Your Majesty."

"There are Heartless everywhere," Aiwemon added. "We haven't even gotten to a new world because we've been fighting so many between worlds. They're like hot soup."

Everyone looked at the digimon on the screen curiously. "_Hot soup?_" asked a quacking voice from the communicator (Donald was obviously within earshot of Sora and Aiwemon), "_How are Heartless like hot soup?_"

"You really want to eat it, but you hurt yourself if you try too hard," Aiwemon answered.

There was a pause.

"That… actually makes a lot of sense," said Kairi, surprised.

"You're right, it does," Menelmon agreed. She looked at Aiwemon through the communicator. "You continue to surprise me Aiwemon." He beamed at her compliment.

"Your Highness," said Kensworth, "you need to get dressed."

Kairi looked at him in confusion. "What? Why?"

"A few people have requested an audience with you, Kairi," Lord Ramius said. Kairi blinked for a few seconds before glancing over at the clock.

She groaned. "Urg… it's like, eleven o'clock and I'm talking with Sora. Can't they come back tomorrow?"

"I would not advise it, milady," Kensworth told her.

"Three of them are members of the Senate who knew your father," Lord Ramius added.

"And blowing 'em off wouldn't be a smart move Kairi," said King Mickey.

Kairi glanced at Menelmon and sighed before giving Sora a sad look through the communicator. "I'm really sorry Sora."

"No, it's okay Kairi," he said. "Go do your Princess thing. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

He was smiling; he was smiling that smile of his that always melted her heart. Being apart from him was almost more painful now than it had been before she'd called him. Kairi kissed her index and middle fingertips and pressed them to Sora's lips on the screen. "I love you," she whispered.

"I know," Sora answered softly. "Love you too. Goodnight Iri."

"Night Sora."

Kairi looked at the screen for another few seconds after it went blank before placing the handle down against her pillow. "Hup!" she exclaimed, rolling off to the edge of her bed. Slippers slid snugly against her toes and Kairi stood up. She reached for the sling hanging off one of the ends of her four-poster bed and fitted it on her shoulder so she could rest her left arm. "Alright Menel," she said, "let's go." Menelmon nodded her head and slowly soared after Kairi.

Kensworth and Lord Ramius looked at Kairi in astonishment as she approached the door. "You can't present yourself like that," Kensworth said, looking over her pink flannel pyjamas and raspberry beret with black trim.

"They're asking if they can talk to me at _eleven o'clock_ at night right in the middle of when I'm talking to _my boyfriend_ who is out there fighting the forces of darkness to keep them safe. They can see me when I'm dressed in whatever I _damn_ want to be dressed in, now step aside Kenny."

Kensworth looked apprehensively at the young Princess, then glanced at both Lord Ramius and at King Mickey. Both of them nodded their heads slowly, and Kensworth moved aside. "Thank you," Kairi said. She sighed. "I'm sorry about snapping, but there's just _a lot_ going on right now. Where are these people who want to speak with me?"

"Waiting in the audience chamber," said Lord Ovan Ramius. Kairi nodded her head and left the room, the four others and Menelmon just behind her.

-A-D-

A few minutes later Kairi exited the lift that took them up to the top level of the castle that held a waiting room to the audience chamber, the audience chamber itself, and the study. She shuffled her feet along the stone floor before pushing open the massive doors into the throne room. The audience chamber in her castle was nearly as large as the one in Disney Castle, and no less impressive. White-washed marble walls and floors stretched far into the room, with one long rug leading all the way up to a dais where two golden thrones with purple satin cushions sat empty. There was room for more thrones, but only the two that sat there gathering dust were present. Tall marble statues lines the walls in alcoves, each one displaying the forever chiselled likeness of past Kings and Queens of the Talerith family line, regardless of before or after all the kingdoms of the world were united.

Kairi hadn't looked upon them often, but every single time she came up into this chamber she couldn't help but glance at each of the statues. These were the men and women who ruled her past. These were the foundation of her blood, the very deepest of her roots. She made a mental note that if she had time later, she should search in what had been her father's study for a book on her family genealogy, or ask Tron if Ansem the Wise had placed information of that sort into Radiant Garden's systems mainframe.

She stopped at the forty-first one and her heart yanked at her. Standing in his marble pose, looking regal and imposing, was the man she knew to be her birth father, King Raithen IV. She gazed upon his likeness carved forevermore into the cold stone. There were long-thought forgotten memories buried in her that had surfaced upon returning to Radiant Garden a couple of months ago, and in her mind's eye she could still remember when she, her father with his golden hair and neatly trimmed short bear, her older brother with his boyish laugh, and her beautiful mother, had lived happily together…

Before the dark times; before the assassin had killed her parents and brother; before she'd been whisked away to the safety of Destiny Islands through a door Ansem found; before Maleficent and the Heartless came.

Kairi shook those thoughts away and wiped a faint tear off of her eyes. She'd had a good life and childhood on the island of Felra, and she'd befriended Sora and Riku, and Selphie and all the others. Her parents there, Seymour and Janet, had been very good to her. Even though her dad had been a bit of a prick that cared a lot about his work, he'd really proven how much he _did_ care for her when she'd returned home with Sora and Riku after the Organization had kidnapped her. But even they were gone now; wiped out by Nixion and the Heartless and Nobodies Maleficent had sent specifically to get rid of them, Sora's mom Anne, and Riku's father and mother Rekun and Riley.

Maleficent. It all came down to Maleficent. Ending the witch wouldn't bring her family back, and it certainly wouldn't bring back the baby that her mother would have had had Maleficent just left the Islands alone; but at least getting rid of her would help prevent tragedies like the ones that had befallen them from occurring. Kairi'd _wanted_ that baby brother or sister as soon as she'd found out.

That thought in mind, Kairi continued onwards past the distant image of her birth father and approached the four people standing near to the dais. Three of them were chatting quietly together, and one was standing somewhat separate from them, looking at them with apprehension. All four were men, and the three who were speaking with each other were dressed in finely embroidered tunics and smart black pants with golden belts and shiny shoes and thick overcoats. In contrast, the other man who stood a little ways away from them was in a collared shirt and grey slacks underneath a tweed jacket.

The fourth was looking right at her as she strode towards the four men and Kairi stopped about ten feet away from them. She waited a few seconds, and when none of the three chatting men made any motion to suggest that they had noticed her, Kairi sighed and rolled her eyes before proceeding towards the fourth.

He instantly began to bow, politely bringing his arm in front of his chest as he bent his back. "Your Highness."

"At your service," Kairi replied pleasantly. "How may I help you?"

The three men who had been chatting suddenly turned around and stared at her. Kairi shiftily glanced at them with a tiny smirk at the stunned looks on their faces before returning to the man in front of her as he began to speak.

"Your Highness," he began, "my name is Tyler Johnson; I'm the principal of Keila Elementary School."

"Nice to meet you Mr. Johnson," Kairi said, extending her hand as Menelmon landed on her shoulder. King Mickey, Garda, and Lord Ramius were standing about twenty paces behind her, with Kensworth five in front of them. The principal shook her hand, and Kairi smiled. Keila had been her mother's name. "So, what can I do for you?"

"Well…" he replied slowly before sighing. "Your Highness, is it, well, _normal_, for you to give audiences in your pyjamas?"

Kairi giggled in her throat. "It's eleven at night and you guys showed up when I was talking to my boyfriend before going to bed. If you want an audience at eleven, then you're going to get me at eleven in whatever I happen to be in, because I'd rather get it over and done with quickly before going back to my big comfy bed."

Principal Johnson nodded. "Fair enough. I came across some excellent Christmas cookies while I was shopping with my wife earlier this evening and the cashier at the counter informed me that you had baked them. They were so good, I was wondering if you'd be interested in coming by my school in a few days and giving them to our students."

Kairi's eyes brightened. Her instant answer would have been 'yes', but she held back for a second. "Would I also be able to read a story to some of the younger classes, like your kindergarten and first graders?"

"Of course," answered Mr. Johnson with a smile.

"Then I'd be delighted to," Kairi told him, figuring that that had been the whole reason he'd come by in the first place. Who asks a Princess to come and give cookies to elementary school kids just because they were damn good cookies? "How does Friday morning and afternoon sound?"

"That sounds swell. Thank you Your Highness."

"The pleasure's all mine," Kairi told him, shaking his hand again after his second bow. "Tell all your kids tomorrow, and I'll keep in touch." He nodded his head and strode out, a bounce in his step.

Kairi smiled and watched him go before turning to the other three, who were looking at her with disapproving looks. They bowed quickly before the first one of them spoke. "It's inappropriate for you to be dressed like that, Your Highness."

She already knew that _this_ audience she was granting wasn't going to be a pleasant one, and her eyes hardened. "You heard what I told Mr. Johnson. _You_ got me out of bed while I was talking to Sora, so you can suffer the consequences. If you'd wanted to speak to me while I was dressed, you should have dropped by before I had my bath."

Kairi felt a hand on the shoulder opposite the one Menelmon was roosting on, and she turned and saw her godfather standing beside her. He knelt down slightly and whispered in her ear. "These three men are members of the Senate, and all of them were advisors to your father and Ansem the Wise. None were nobility, but they are still important men." He stood up straighter. "Princess Kairi, this is Senator Clark Bridges," he indicated a man with a mane of grey hair and brown eyes, "Senator Bill Barfolk," a man with black hair and blue eyes, "and Senator Reese Tyson," the final man, who was light blond with flecks of grey strewn throughout and also held blue eyes.

"And how may I assist you, Senators?" Kairi asked, trying to shift her tone into something more polite.

"We understand that the police received noise complaints about Rockshaw Park this evening," said Senator Barfolk.

"And we also understand that you took part in the commotion occurring there," added Senator Bridges.

Kairi nodded. "Yeah. The police that showed up came by and talked to us and told us to keep the noise from our snowball fight down. They're pretty new though, aren't they? Captain Beagle and his King's Honour's Company from the 1st Royal Swords Battalion of the 8th Royal Guards made better police officers than they do. Hm, that's a mouthful, and there's only twenty-three of them in the whole Regiment, that's not even a Platoon over in what Selphie and Tidus are in."

"We're working on it," Senator Tyson answered slowly, drawing his head away in embarrassment, "about the police, I mean."

"A snowball fight is not something a Princess like you should be engaging in," Senator Bridges said rigidly. "It is beneath your station, as are those people who dragged you into it."

"Those _people_ as you call them are my friends!" Kairi retorted. "And unless you can name for me about a dozen noble children that I could hang out with, which I note that there really aren't because Lord Ramius is the only nobleman left and I haven't met my godfather's wife or any of his kids, you can stuff it about my friends. And don't even _mention_ that you think Sora's not good enough for me despite him being an honorary noble for being a Keyblade Wielder _and_ the Chosen Master of the Kingdom Key!"

"They're common," Senator Tyson muttered, "you're—"

"They're middle-class and I was raised middle-class!" Kairi retorted. "So shut it."

"Regardless," Senator Bridges continued, undeterred by the princess' passion. "It was still a very pedestrian thing for you to do, especially since you inadvertently got the police involved. Tomorrow you are going to hold a press conference to apologize for the incident, as well as for exploding at a store manager."

Kairi felt a jolt of surprise before she smothered it and narrowed her eyes. "So you know about that too?" she asked. _That_ one she felt guilty about, but the snowball fight was completely innocent.

"Yes, we do Your Highness," said Senator Barfolk.

Kairi looked upon the unflinching, disapproving looks of the three Senators before sighing. "You're advising me to hold a press conference tomorrow?"

"Yes, Your Highness. It is only proper for you to apologize for your actions today."

"Fine," Kairi answered. "I'll have a press conference tomorrow. I'm sure you can make the arrangements, since I certainly don't know how."

"Of course Your Highness," answered Tyson.

"Good," she said pointedly. "Now I'm going to bed. Let me know in the morning when and where it is. Goodnight." Kairi spun around and began walking back out of the throne room. Menelmon flew quietly beside her, and King Mickey, Garda, Ovan, and Kensworth followed.

"Aw, don't be upset about them Kairi," King Mickey told her. "They're just trying to do the best thing for your image as Princess Royal."

Kairi didn't glance behind her at the mouse monarch, but instead looked at the statue of her father in its alcove until she'd passed it. _Dad,_ she thought,_ did you ever have to put up with crap like this?_

Not really finding an answer in the stone image of her past, Kairi came to a decision of her own and turned an eye towards King Mickey. "My image will be who I am and what I believe in," she answered, "and I won't let it be dictated by those Senators."

-A-D-

Senator Bridges had a message sent to the castle the next morning, letting Kairi know that her press conference was set for one in the afternoon in front of the parliament building in the middle of the city. Kairi took the news with her morning potion, so that she could deal with both unpleasant things at the same time.

"I hate taking these things," Kairi muttered, looking at the green bottle filled with the thick green liquid. She sniffed. Her nose was a little runny from the previous day, but it could have been worse. Kairi glanced behind her and noticed that Kensworth was watching her closely, so she grimaced and raised the potion bottle to her lips.

Her glass of orange juice was in her hand the second after she'd finished the potion, gasping for breath. It was a shame that she had to ruin the taste of orange juice, but anything to get rid of the yucky bile taste that was a potion was worth it. Realizing that, she only drained about half of her juice and settled instead on taking a heaping spoonful of porridge into her mouth.

The door behind her opened up and a male servant came in. She thought that she recognized him as one of the two that had been chatting when she'd snuck out to see Sora when he had been in hospital, but she couldn't remember which one or what their names were. "Your Highness," he said, "there's a news report on the SV about what happened at Rockshaw Park last night."

Kairi looked behind her and swallowed. "Really?" she asked.

"I want to see that," Menelmon said, flying off of Kairi's shoulder and going towards the door.

"Yeah, they're showcasing your handiwork," the servant replied, winking.

Kairi smiled and pushed her chair back and placed a hand on her head, making sure that her beret wasn't going to fall off. "Okay, this I've got to see." She ran after the servant for about thirty seconds, taking three turns, before winding up in a nicely sized common room that the servants mostly used. About a dozen were there, standing and watching the SV. Several turned around and bowed or curtsied as she approached, saying, "Your Highness," or "Princess," in greeting, which prompted the others to all look around at Kairi and greet her in kind. Kairi nodded her head once to collectively do the same.

"…_orts of noise disturbances at Rockshaw Park last night. When police arrived on the scene, it was to find a large snowball fight underway between members of the United Forces, and Her Royal Highness, Princess Kairi, and her royal bodyguard composed of members of the 8__th__ Royal Guards,"_ the voiceover of the male newscaster was saying as the spherevision screen showed the park as it currently was. The snow was all churned up with all the people that had been running through it the night before, and there were the shapes of breaking chest-high walls and defensive mounds made of snow. Kairi looked at it all through the screen and smiled, but what made her smile most was what the camera panned onto next.

There was a simple rectangular keep fifteen metres tall right in the middle of the park, with ten-metre high walls boxing it in with twenty metres between the walls and the keep. All of it was made of snow and ice, with a broken icicle portcullis at the gate of the walls. On the side of the keep's open entryway there was writing carved into the snow and ice, large enough to be seen and read easily from a few metres away. It read, 'Kairi's Castle: Definitely the Final Dungeon' and underneath it was a cartoon drawing of Kairi's head with two fingers splayed out nearby for victory. The Princess and every single magic user that had come to the battle had laboured on the whole construct before they began, and somehow, someway, Kairi and her guards had been able to defend the entire thing from three whole companies of soldiers in their snowball war. Twenty-four, including her, against two-hundred and seventy, and they'd somehow managed to win.

She wanted to keep that streak alive.

"_Waking up this morning, children were surprised and excited to find a giant snow castle in the park right outside their homes."_

"_It's great,"_ said one teenager as they caught her walking on her way to school, _"I've never seen anything like it before. Wish I coulda played in it last night if that's what was going on."_

"_I'm going to play with my friends after school here for sure,"_ said a boy, looking no older than ten, _"it's going to be sweet! We don't even have to make our own snow forts, it's all right here."_

The scene shifted back into the studio, where the dark-skinned news anchor for the Radiant Garden Network News, Barbara, was sitting._ "The Princess is scheduled to speak about the castle and the events of yesterday evening at a spherevised press conference later today."_

Kairi laughed and the others all looked at her. "I got on the news!" she cheered to herself, "and this time it _wasn't_ because of some big battle with evil or because I got hurt, it was because of a bigass fun snowball fight!" She laughed again and proceeded back to where her breakfast was waiting. Already the potion's effects were working; her ribs weren't giving her any pain anymore.

-A-D-

"You can't wear that."

Kairi pursed her lips and took a breath, trying to lock away her anger. Senator Reese Tyson was standing outside her room, which she had just exited, and he was looking at her new winter outfit (minus the snow pants) with disapproval in his blue eyes.

"And why not?" Kairi asked slowly. "I just got it."

"It isn't suitable for a princess to wear out of doors," he answered. The Senator sighed. "Must we explain _everything_ to you, child?"

"Then would you mind telling me what _is_ suitable to wear outside in this weather without freezing?" Kairi asked as politely as she could.

He held up a hanger. Hanging from it was a long white fur coat with long sleeves. In his other hand was a pair of white gloves, and on the hanger's hook was a square white fur hat.

Kairi took one look at the ensemble, realized that she would probably look pretty cute in it and that it would keep her warm, and shook her head. She couldn't give in, not even over something this trivial that they still felt like disagreeing with her over.

_I may have no aspirations of becoming Queen, but I'll be damned if I let these guys rule over me._

"No thank you, I think I'll make do with what I'm wearing," Kairi answered, her feet already moving away from her room.

Senator Tyson started towards her, "Your Highness—!"

Kairi bit him. "That's right! _Your Highness_! Who is the Princess here, me or you?

He stopped and mumbled back something along the lines of, "Well, you are…"

"Exactly," Kairi told him definitively. "I'm the Princess. I make the final decision. If my decision isn't well-liked, then it falls on my head and not yours. If people don't like what I wear, they can take issue with me and I can explain my reasoning and decisions to them. But I am not budging unless I'm given a damn good reason to budge. This outfit looks nice, it keeps me warm, and it's what _I_ decided on when I got it. If you can think of any reason that trumps _all_ of that, name it. You can't? Okay, so we're agreed, now I'm going."

Honestly, she'd only given him a half-second with which to answer in, but that wasn't important. What was important was that Menelmon was on her shoulder and that the speech she'd prepared was in a pocket on the inside of her jacket. Lord Ramius, King Mickey, and Garda met her in the entrance hall and followed her into her chocobo-drawn carriage with eight members of the King's Honour's Company, their head today being the Company's XO Lt. Pabel with Sgt. Parkinson alongside. Kairi had hoped for Beagle, but he was busy training the remainder of the company in… special tactics.

"How are the meetings going?" she asked openly as Gerald closed the door behind them and the carriage started to rumble away from the castle.

"We're making progress," King Mickey answered. "A good deal of the logistical problems and troop assignments has been decided. We were even able to launch the _UFS_ _Unity_ yesterday and we're launching off the _RGS_ _Starlight_ in three days. It's a shame you missed seeing the _Unity_ off."

Kairi looked at them quizzically. "The _Unity_?"

"It's a massive star cruiser," Garda answered her. "Larger than even the _Avenger_. It and the _RGS Starlight_ are going to be the flagships of two separate battle groups. The _Unity_ is to be staffed with personnel from all of Disney Castle, Radiant Garden, Twilight Town, Destiny Islands, the GDI, Oseans and Yuktobanians, and State military, while the _Starlight_ will be mostly members of Radiant Garden, since it is classed as a Radiant Garden ship."

"With your approval," Lord Ramius began, "we'd like you and Naminé to take the _Starlight_ as your personal flagship."

Kairi felt a little overwhelmed and honoured. "Our-_our_ own flagship?" she asked incredulously. Kairi shook her head slightly. "N—no, that's too much. Besides, I'm probably not going to be on it very often. Frodo won't last long in Middle-earth without me and Sora around if Maleficent's going to help Sauron take back the One Ring."

Lord Ramius and King Mickey sighed and Kairi quickly looked between them and started to speak again. "But I can certainly call Naminé and ask her if she'd like the honour of having the _Starlight_," she told them. "I think she'd like that."

"I think she would too," Menelmon added. "It seems to me that you don't really want to be sitting back giving orders, you'd rather be there on the front lines giving orders."

Kairi smiled slightly. "I'd rather be on the front lines, true, but giving orders? Not so much right now."

"You were pretty assertive back on Destiny Islands after Blitz Fest when the Heartless attacked," Garda observed, a ghost of an approving smile on his face.

"But that was with Sora and my friends," Kairi returned, seeking justification. "I'm allowed to be a bit bossy around them. I can't just boss around people I don't know or have any emotional connection to!"

"Then build an emotional connection to them," replied Ovan Ramius.

Kairi shook her head, remembering something. "I can't do that," she said quietly.

"Why not?" her godfather asked her.

"Because if I do and they die because I told them to do something, I'll feel guilty, like I'd sent them to their deaths," she answered, sinking into her seat as the carriage jostled. "I don't want to feel that kind of pain again. Don't make me feel that kind of pain again."

Her voice wasn't angry, but it was certainly emotional. Kairi cursed herself inwardly. She was about to cry for a second time in as many days. She was being stupid. She had to be strong, strong for Sora, strong for Naminé, strong for Riku and Roxas; strong for herself. The death of the female soldier Amber Kelsey still weighed heavily on her heart. If only she'd been stronger, if only she'd been better with her healing magic, if only she'd been able to end the battle sooner, then they might have been able to save her; then the young woman might not have died in front of her and Sora.

If only she'd been…

Arms wrapped around her, and Kairi was taken aback for a moment as she took in the concrete-coloured hair of her godfather beside her head. He was hugging her, tightly, and it didn't bring her any discomfort. Another pair of arms came around her body, these ones the strong and knotted arms of her former master, and Kairi let herself go as she stretched her one good arm around the two men as tightly as she could. Menelmon softly placed a wing against Kairi's cheek. The embrace was so strong and kind, like her father's after she'd returned home with Sora and Riku.

"Oh little girl," Garda said kindly in his gruff voice. "I am so sorry for the suffering you've had. But this sort of training, I could never have provided you nor wanted to."

"Let it out Kairi," Lord Ramius told her. "Let it out, Princess, let out all your frustration at the cruelty of this unfair world."

She did, but if she had any presence of mind she would have taken note that this was the first time her former master had been so straightforwardly caring to her. King Mickey sat in silence, sorrowfully contemplating many things.

-A-D-

When Kairi's carriage arrived at the appointed place at the appointed time, a platform already erected with a podium in place was waiting for her. Kairi stepped out as Gerald the footman opened the door for her, and she was instantly greeted by the blast of cold winter air. A shiver ran up her body involuntarily, and she wiped her eyes again. The ride had aided her, and now she strode up to the podium with purpose reignited.

But she stopped short at the sight she beheld.

"What are you guys doing here?" she asked, frowning curiously at Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie and Hayner, Pence, and Olette.

"We're getting chewed out, same as you," Hayner answered with a smile. He nudged his head behind him, and Kairi noticed the other two Senators from the night before standing there.

"Ah, there you are Your Highness," said Senator Clark Bridges, they grey-haired, brown-eyed man coming towards her. "We have a speech prepared for you; I trust that you'll approve of it." He smiled pleasantly and handed her the document, even though he refrained from looking at her in the eye.

Kairi took the document in her gloved hand, glanced behind her at the assembled news crews, journalists, photographers, and civilians who had come by to hear her speak, and skimmed the document.

_Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,_

_As many of you may be aware by now, yesterday evening there was an incident of public disorder that occurred in Rockshaw Park involving myself and a number of youth from Destiny Islands and Twilight Town. I would like to inform you that the activities that took place yesterday evening within the bounds of the park were never intended to be allowed to take place, and it was only through the daring plotting of the teenagers behind me that they transpired. Rest assured that I would never willingly take part in an event so mundane and pedestrian, and I deeply apologize for my involvement in the frivolity. There are so many greater issues to address._

_Also, I sincerely apologize for my actions within Hollyhead Mall yesterday. What left my mouth was a slip of my tongue and I deeply regret it and am retracting my unnecessary comment._

Kairi stopped reading seriously after that. The rest of the page dealt with highlighting good things that the government had done for the people of Radiant Garden or planned to do, but Kairi wasn't well-versed enough in what the government was actively doing to feel confident about supporting them. She trusted the Prime Minister; she didn't trust these Senators or what they'd written down, especially with them going so far as to almost make her label her friends as conspirators and hooligans.

_Yeah, so not reading this,_ she thought. Kairi looked up at the Senator and nodded at him. He gestured with his arm, and Kairi stepped up to the podium. At once there were a number of flashes from cameras and she could almost hear the spherecams rolling.

"Good afternoon," she said into the microphone. "I apologize for calling you out here on such a cold day, but I guess we can't have Destiny Islands' weather all year round now can we?" She smiled slightly at the few chuckles she got from the reporters and glanced back at her friends and at Garda, Lord Ramius, and King Mickey. They were smiling back at her, so she proceeded and pulled her own paper out from within her ski jacket.

"Least the sun's shining today," she said absently, looking up into the clear sky, not a falling snowflake in sight. Kairi glanced back down at her prepared sheet of paper. "Firstly, there are reports that I was involved in an incident at Rockshaw Park last night involving a large snowball fight. I would like to dispel these rumours right now, by confirming that they are all true. I took part in the events of last night at Rockshaw Park and, in fact, while my friend Sergeant Hayner Garneky of Abel Company, 1st United Infantry Regiment, was the first one to threaten bringing others into our private snowball fight, _I_ was the one who initiated the call for aid by asking my Royal Guard to come and take part. Following that, the companies of my friends behind me were swift in answering their call, and a massive snowball war was waged last night. I didn't anticipate that it would grow so large, and I freely say that the soldiers behind me were conspirators, conspirators in a conspiracy to get me to have fun in this cold winter weather that I am so unused to.

"I understand that this snowball fight was a somewhat childish thing to do, and is certainly beneath something that a Princess should theoretically be doing, however, I am going to be honestly blunt with you all. I don't care about what society expects of me. I. Don't. Care. The snowball fight that my friends and I had was amazing, and it was the most fun I'd had since my sister Princess Naminé knighted me and I defeated Cho'kal, Chief Guardian Garda's Stone Golem, during the Quarterfinals of the Zeus Cup on Olympus Coliseum.

"Looking back on the snowball fight, I realize that it really wasn't fair that my guard and I were to defend me and my snow castle against the combined might of the soldiers in the United Forces, _and completely cream them_. So this evening, we are going to have a second round so that those brave soldiers may restore their lost honour, open to the public. Anyone may participate in the battle, and anyone may choose any side, be it attacking the castle and 'snowballing' me into submission, or defending the castle and repelling the invading army. The game will being at seven pm, and hot chocolate and cookies will be served afterwards at nine-thirty at Talerith Castle for all combatants interested."

"Secondly," Kairi started quickly before Senator Bridges or Barfolk could interrupt her, "not many of you may be aware of this but, I exploded at a store manager in Hollyhead Mall late yesterday afternoon when he told me that I did not have to pay for the winter clothes you see me wearing now. I yelled at him, nearly screamed at him, because I didn't want to be treated differently from any other customer, because I wanted to pay, because I wished to feel like a normal teenager again."

She paused.

"For nearly ten years, I lived a life without my memories of Radiant Garden, without the knowledge that I was a Princess and heir to a throne and Kingdom. My situation had been no different from any other regular kid. I went to school, made friends, played, laughed, been scolded and got into fights; loved and was loved. But now I can see that that is no longer the case. My life has changed in so many ways, and brought me to the people that expect me to lead them in the future. To the manager of SportGarden, I sincerely apologize for my actions to you yesterday. They were uncalled-for and foolish."

"However, my words were not without reason. I feel that even though the timing may not be the greatest, that what I am about to say needs to be shared with the people of Radiant Garden. I have only told one person this, but I have decided—"

Kairi couldn't finish, as she saw the blue light of a claymore forming on the ground nearby. She'd only seen the round energy projections once before, back when she'd first come to Radiant Garden with Sora after they'd fled Destiny Islands and left Disney Castle with Max in tow, but she vividly remembered what they were.

"Son of a," she muttered, not caring if it was picked up by the microphone. She flashed out her right hand, grateful that her ribs no longer pained her, and looked behind her just as Crowning Flame appeared in the Princess' hand. "Menelmon!"

"Mm-hm!" Menelmon replied, taking wing in the cold air. "Ice Feathers!" she shouted, whipping one wing out. Four ice-laced feathers shot off her wing and pierced the body of a Neoshadow that had been flung into the air by a claymore. It writhed. Kairi's eyes whipped around again, and she spotted the Heartless now just as more claymores appeared and started to move towards their targets. There were four bulbous Morning Stars, ever popular in Radiant Garden, and scattered with them were two large Crimson Jazzes and several pitch black Neoshadows along with a few of a type she hadn't seen before. They resembled scorpions, with black chitin armour and grey faces with big yellow eyes. The claws of a scorpion were instead scythe-like arms, and the stinger that reared back was less a stinger than it was a bulbous pod-shaped mouth. With them were also several sage-looking Heartless in green robes floating above the earth with massive tomes in front of them.

"Please remain calm," Kairi quickly assured the reporters, who were just about ready to break and scatter in panic, "we'll take care of this quickly!" The Dragon Knight of Radiant Garden leapt right off her platform with a yell, almost reaching the closest Morning Star just as two claymores converged on it and fired their energy payloads into the Heartless' base, jolting it up into the sky.

She jumped again, slicing her Keyblade across the Morning Star's front. Crowning Flame bit two centimetres into the Heartless' front and then stopped, not enough strength in Kairi's one-handed stroke to finish it. Regardless, Kairi shouted as she pushed with all her might, and the Morning Star crashed into a building's brick wall before falling down to the ground, only to get shot up again by another claymore.

The female Keyblade Wielder dropped to the ground, Crowning Flame held out behind her back as one of the Scorpionkin Heartless landed in front of her after being launched into the air from a claymore hit. The white digivice clipped to her jeans started screaming and its screen glowed with golden light. Menelmon flew above Kairi, her body radiating the same golden light. "Menelmon digivolve to, Soronmon!"

Kairi looked up, smiling at the sight of the giant bird that was now above her. Her feathers and wings were white as snow, and sharp talons were now on her massive brown feet where there had none before on the yellow legs Menelmon had. A mane of ice-white feathers ruffled her neck, and between the Champion digimon's large brown eyes was a cresting plumage of ice-blue.

"Polar Chill!" the Champion roared, flapping her massive wings. Icicles the size of large watermelons formed and barrelled down from underneath her wings, striking against the fire bombs of one of the Crimson Jazzes and breaking them apart. More icicles continued to rain down upon the fire Heartless, and when its body was pierced by no less than four it broke apart in a cloud of darkness.

The scythe-arm of the Scorpionkin Heartless in front of her reminded Kairi of the rest of the battle at hand. A rip formed in the side of her ski jacket and Kairi gasped slightly as the scythe struck her right side. Growling, Kairi jumped forward between the Heartless' arms and stabbed Crowning Flame into the Scorpionkin Heartless' head. It shrieked and instantly began writhing in pain.

Kairi gripped her Keyblade tighter with her one good hand and got behind it, digging it in as she rode the frantic Scorpionkin. The scythe-arms flashed up around her, trying to dislodge her and her Keyblade, but they just weren't flexible enough to reach the Princess. The Scorpionkin's tail jerked spastically, and from the mouth that had replaced the stinger blobs of purple gunk were spewing out of it. Kairi could hear screams, but blocked them out as she watched one of them fly through the air and quickly calculated where it was going to land.

Kairi's eyes widened in fright for a moment when she saw that the purple goo was going right for Olette, the brown-haired girl duelling with a colour-changing Bookmaster. "Olette! Look out!" Kairi shouted. The girl turned at the warning, but didn't catch sight of the purple goo until it was a half-second away from hitting her. Olette leaped, but some of it splashed onto her trench coat and burned through the fabric. A howl was torn from Olette's lips as she landed hard on the frozen ground. Some of the goo had persisted and hit her leg.

That cry broke through the block Kairi had placed on the sounds of everyone else battling, and she removed her hand from her Keyblade and tightened the grip her legs had on the writhing Scorpionkin's neck. She placed her right hand right next to her Keyblade's embedded blade. An arrow of light pierced right through the broken chitin in front of her hand and burrowed deep into the Heartless' head. The Scorpionkin shuddered for a moment and stopped moving, and Kairi yanked Crowning Flame out of its head before flashing into the air twelve feet away from the Heartless. The arrow exploded within the head, and the light cut through the cloud of darkness that the defeated Heartless became.

Crowning Flame swept through a Neoshadow that had been tossed up by a claymore, and Kairi Flash-Stepped again, this time emerging in front of the Bookmaster that Olette had been fighting. She deflected a lightning bolt that had been sent towards the downed mage, and Kairi turned to look at Olette. "Are you alright?"

Kairi winced when she got a look at Olette's leg. The place where the goo had hit was red and inflamed, and beads of sweat were rolling down the leg and Olette's pale face. "You can look at it later," Olette answered. "Let's just clean this up first." Kairi nodded and turned around, flinging Crowning Flame at the Bookmaster.

Her Keyblade cut through the Heartless tome and pierced the robed creature's chest. The Keyblade flashed with light and reappeared in its Wielder's hand as she summoned it back, noting the pink heart rising through the darkness formed by the dead Bookmaster's body. Kairi glanced at Olette again. "I'm going to cast a spell now," she said, "keep me covered."

Olette nodded and clutched her small staff closer to her chest, but suddenly shouted, "Look out!"

A blob of the purple poison goo from a Scorpionkin was arcing through the air right for her. Just seeing the damage that a tiny bit of it had done to Olette's leg was enough to make Kairi quake at the imagined pain that getting hit completely would do, and the girl's legs moved to carry her out of its path even though in her mind she figured that it was already too late.

"Kairi-REOW!"

The auburn-haired Princess of Heart fell to the ground as Soronmon fell upon her, whacking her out of the way of the purple blob but taking the hit in full herself. Kairi rose desperately screaming "Soronmon!" at the sight of her partner wracked with pain, the digimon's feathers already dissolving and her wings pressing against the ground for support. Kairi shoved away the need to scream her partner's name again and concentrated on the spell she was about to cast. She'd only practiced it once before; she couldn't afford to mess up the words. "Flames of Light that burn in my heart, rise up from the ground and illuminate this deep darkness that surrounds us. Become the weapon of the champions of Light who sit on their nine thrones. Burn with the strength of the four winds behind your graceful strokes. Flame Style 43, Torching Brands!"

Crowning Flame became embroiled in golden flames and Kairi looked at it for a scant moment before plunging the Keyblade into the frozen stone beneath her feet, just noticing that Olette sent a bolt of lightning into a nearby Neoshadow that had been thrown into the air by a claymore. Kairi felt a good deal of her energy being pulled out of her, trying to suck her dry for using a Style stronger than any she'd attempted to cast in combat before, but she maintained her will and reigned it in. Golden light pulsed down the blade of her embedded Keyblade, and nine pillars of golden fire, each a dozen feet tall, roared out of the ground beneath most of the remaining Heartless. There wasn't even a moment's notice for the Heartless to react, not that any of them would have taken note of their impending doom.

The pillars of brightly burning golden flame swooned after nine seconds of rending their intense heat and light upon the battlefield, and each pillar's flame came together and formed a sword with a blade shaped of the same burning golden flames. None of the nine Heartless the pillars had consumed remained, but the one other Crimson Jazz, one Morning Star, three Neoshadows and a Scorpionkin still did.

Kairi shouted "Strike!"

The nine brands of golden flame surged forward, and each one mercilessly cut a swath through one of the six. The strong Crimson Jazz resisted the first, but even it couldn't withstand two blows and a blast of ice from Pence.

It was silent for a moment after the darkness the Heartless had disintegrated into disappeared, then Kairi unzipped and took off her damaged ski jacket. She was too hot to wear it at the moment. Moving her arm around a little in the sling, Kairi turned to see her guard's Executive Officer, Lieutenant Pabel, coming up to her. "Are you alright Your Highness?" he asked, sheathing his sword and looking no worse for wear from the skirmish.

"Fine, just a little bruise," Kairi answered, dismissing Crowning Flame in a flash of light. Kairi looked around. Some of the reporters and photographers who had been in the crowd were lying on the ground, clutching tightly at various places on their bodies where there was a small wound. A civilian who wasn't with the press but had come by with the crowd to see Kairi speak was howling, the skin of his side bared to the elements and red and splotchy from where the poisonous blobs had struck.

Kairi gave her Lieutenant a grimly resigned look. "Have the men see to the wounded. (She turned) Hayner! Pence! Tidus! Wakka! Help me with Olette and Soronmon!" Kairi had barely taken three steps towards her partner when microphones were being shoved into her face and a crowd of people obscured her view of the Champion digimon.

"Princess Kairi! How are you feeling right now?"

"What are your plans for getting these Heartless attacks to stop?"

"Are you and the other Keyblade Wielders strong enough to fight Maleficent head-on?"

"How is the government's spending on the defence budget justified if Heartless are still appearing within the city?"

"Princess Kairi, the claymores were supposedly upgraded to such a level that any Heartless appearing within the walls would be destroyed within moments. Do you have an answer for why they are failing us now?"

"Princess Kairi…"

"Princess Kairi…"

"Princess Kairi…"

The auburn-haired princess jammed her eyes shut in the babble of voices. "ENOUGH!"

Her voice thundered throughout the square, stopping all movement and silencing the reporters and their constant questions.

"I don't have any answers for you right now," she told them. "I'm a little drained from casting that Flame Style and I've got wounded friends to take care of. If you want to ask questions, see me—"

Kairi never finished, gasping as Menelmon, _not _Soronmon, limped towards her through the air. Menelmon dropped, and Kairi roughly shoved two people out of her way with her cast and caught Menelmon just before she would have hit the ground, using her own body as a cushion.

"Menel!" Kairi whispered. The small bird digimon was shivering frantically; a large number of her ice-blue feathers from her neck and back had been burned away, revealing blistered dark crimson flesh. Tears of pain at the damage done to her partner by the Scorpionkin's venomous pus threatened to break past Kairi's indigo eyes, and Menelmon's wing lightly scraped against her cheek as the bird digimon slowly opened her pain-filled brown eyes.

"Are you… okay… Kairi?" Menelmon asked slowly. Kairi dumbly nodded her head.

"Yes, yes I'm alright Menel," she replied. "I'm not hurt. And don't worry, we're going to fix you up right away."

"That's good," Menelmon answered quietly. "I wouldn't… have wanted… you… to be…"

Her eyes closed.

"Menel?" Kairi asked, horror quickly overtaking her and momentarily overriding any tears she might have shed. "Hey, Menel, say something. Don't do this to me Menelmon." Kairi gasped as pieces of grey light started to flake off Menelmon's feet and rise into the sky, leaving nothing behind. Tears fell hot and fast now as she could only watch her faithful and friendly digimon partner's data fly away as her body slowly underwent the process of reconfiguring. "Hold on! Come on! Hold on Menelmon! You can't leave!"

The last bits of the ice-bird digimon's data flew off into the sky, and Kairi screamed in her grief. "NO, MENELMON!"

Several minutes went by as Kairi's body was wracked with inconsolable sobs, the princess weeping her heart out for her lost friend. This was beyond impossible. Menelmon couldn't die, she just couldn't! She was one of the best friends Kairi'd ever had, and one of the strongest too. Even though they'd only been together for a few months, Menel had rarely left Kairi's side since the two of them had first met in Primary Village. She'd loved Menelmon and bonded with the little ice-bird digimon like no other, and now she was…

"A shame," someone said behind her. "Are you alright Your Highness?"

Kairi glanced behind her with the corner of her eye, spotting the speaker and recognizing him through her tear-blurred vision as one of the three Senators, but which one he was she couldn't tell nor care. "You bastard," she murmured.

"Hm?"

"A shame? A SHAME! IS THAT ALL YOU CAN CALL IT, A FUCKING SHAME!" Kairi roared, unable to find the strength to even turn around, let alone stand up. It was all she could do to keep her back skyward and her good hand pressed against the ground to keep the majority of her body above the cold hard ground. "One of my best friends just _DIED_ to protect me, and all you can do is call it a shame and ask me if I'm alright. Do I _look_ like I'm alright you inconsiderate—!"

She stopped herself, and forced her legs underneath her. Menelmon wouldn't have wanted her ranting and raving. With gargantuan effort, Kairi stood on legs that wobbled and nearly gave way beneath her, but her voice was still loud and not at all hoarse.

"Maleficent!" Kairi bellowed into the sky. "I don't know if this will reach you, but if it does, I want you to know that I vow that I will put an end to you! Do you hear me, witch! I'll get you for this! _I…_ _will_ defeat you! The Light I hold and the Light of my friends will cut you down, and then all the people of all the worlds will live free from the fear of you; free from your black soul and tainted darkness! Then nobody else will have to die because of _you_! You won't take anybody else I love from me!"

Her strength gone from her final scream, Kairi fell back onto the ground, tears streaking out of her eyes again. "Oh Menel," she whispered in agony. "If only I'd been stronger. If only I'd been faster. If I'd only seen that one coming, then maybe you, maybe you wouldn't have…" Kairi sniffed and placed her head between her knees, the sobs coming on harder now. "Menelmon…"

-A-D-

Kairi stayed that way for what seemed like a long time. She couldn't discern the passing of time, for each second felt like an eternity with the gaping black hole the loss of her partner left in her heart. This must have been what T.K. had felt like for that minute after Angemon used up all his strength to defeat Devimon.

For a moment, Kairi burned with jealousy at the young boy. At least Angemon had reverted back into a digiegg.

After some time she was able to discern that somebody was calling her name.

_It doesn't matter,_ she thought. _She's gone. She waited for me for ages and ages, and now she's gone. I'm a horrible digidestined partner, I'm a horrible Keyblade Wielder; I'm a horrible person period. I should just lay down and die._

_How would that accomplish anything?_ The voice of her Keyblade, Alcezeran, retorted. _How would that bring about the revenge you've just sworn?_

_Shut up!_ Kairi retorted.

"Kairi!"

The auburn-haired Princess buried her head in her knees even further. "Go away," she muttered quietly.

"Kairi, you really need to see this. Tron's been trying to get a hold of you for the last thirty minutes."

It was Selphie who was talking to her. Kairi looked up into her best friend's green eyes, and she felt her grief coming on again. "Oh Selphie!" she wailed, throwing herself into the girl's arms. The brunette just took her and let Kairi cry on her shoulder for a minute, softly running a hand up and down Kairi's back and patting her head.

"Kairi," Selphie finally said, "I think you _really_ ought to see this."

Kairi had learned long ago that arguing with Selphie was pointless when she gave her that adamant look, so she didn't even try. For many minutes Selphie led her on through the city until they had returned to the castle, standing outside the castle's postern with the gardens all covered in snow. Kairi gazed sombrely at the snow-covered flowers and naked trees. Menelmon had used to love roosting in those branches.

Selphie just smiled and kept pulling her onward. They went into the castle's underbelly through the door in the postern, and down the halls of the science labs that Ansem the Wise had used. Dimly, Kairi recognized her surroundings and got a general idea of where Selphie was leading her, but it all amounted to nothing in her mind. Menelmon was gone, and unless Kairi went to Primary Village in the Digital World and spent countless hours searching through the thousands of digieggs there, she'd never see her friend again.

The girl placed a finger to her blue Crest of Virtue and bitterly closed her eyes. She'd never see the magnificent splendour of Thorondomon again but for the memories in her heart, and she'd never ride upon Soronmon's majestic wings again, or hear Menel's happy laugh.

They stopped, and Kairi opened her eyes again. Standing in front of her in the computer room were Kensworth, Lord Ramius, King Mickey, Garda, Hayner, Pence, Tidus, Wakka, and Olette with a splint on her leg. There was something that Mickey was holding, and Kairi looked at it.

It was a large white egg as big as the mouse's head, patterned with dark blue circles.

She felt her heart skip two beats as she took it in. "This is…"

"_I found that floating around the Dataspace off the Grid a millicycle ago, User Kairi,"_ said a different voice that Kairi had not heard very often. _"I recognized that its data signature was similar to the digital monsters that you and User Sora had, and came to the conclusion that you would have some idea of what to do with it."_

Kairi came forward slowly and took the digiegg from King Mickey as he offered it to her. Tears were again in her eyes, but Kairi didn't care as she nuzzled the egg against her body and cheek and began to rub her good hand gently down its opposite side. "Yes Tron," she replied, her voice thick with her tears and emotions, "I know exactly what to do with this."

_Lots of love and care, and just rub gently. Don't worry Menelmon, we'll see each other again soon. I promise that we won't lose each other again. I promise._

-A-D-

_For a story that I initially put under 'Humour', this chapter sure isn't much on the 'Humour' side now is it?_

_And it wasn't until about halfway through service this morning that I realized that there could be no better day than today to post this._

_**May the Grace of the Valar Protect You**_

_Shire Folk_


	3. Earn Your Happy Ending

_Here's another part to the Kairi mini-series. Enjoy and laugh at your leisure._

_Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Disney, Square-Enix, or Digimon. All I own are Menelmon, Aiwemon, my original characters and plot._

-A-D-

**Garden of Snow and Ice**

Earn Your Happy Ending

A door opened, and the few heads belonging to the people in the room looked up at the person who opened it, all talk fading into silent echoes. The new arrival closed the door behind her, listened at it for a moment, before striding towards a chair and the table where her friends were sitting. "Kairi's really depressed," Selphie said, reaching for a brown bottle on the table and a glass mug. She strained for a second as she unscrewed the tight lid, wincing slightly as the bottle cap's hard edges attempted to cut through her skin, before it popped off. Sighing, she dipped the bottle and started to pour a honey-brown liquid into the mug. "Even though Menelmon came back as a digiegg, she's still sitting alone in her room, cradling the egg like it's a newborn baby."

"So what can we do?" Olette asked, wincing for the briefest of moments as her leg gave a twinge of pain when she moved it. Selphie sighed and shrugged, making sure that the foam that was rising didn't rise over the edge of her glass. She stopped pouring and set the bottle down on the table before taking her seat.

"I… I don't know," she told them only a moment before taking a swig of her beer. All of those at the table had alcoholic drinks with them, primarily the beer that their messes were stocked with. At this point, none of them really cared that they were underage, as that worry had been stripped of them back when they were all together in George Company in training in Twilight Town under the gods awful then-lieutenant Sobel.

Hayner nodded. "And you guys know as well as I do that after tonight we're basically losing any free time we're still getting."

Selphie smiled slightly. "Especially you, sergeant," she said.

"Ha ha," Hayner replied, giving the Private First Class in the same platoon as him a small smile and raised his glass towards her. "You're going to be doing a lot of work for that, yah grunt."

"I'm shaking in my boots," Selphie retorted.

"Yeah we'll all be busy," said another girl at the table, her shoulder-length golden-brown hair actually down to her shoulders rather than up in a bun on the back of her head. Kia glanced around the table. "Starting tomorrow, the whole damn regiment's preparing to move into the _Starlight_. All us infantry, all the chocobos in the three cavalry squadrons in their battalion, all the supplies…"

"Not to mention the fighter and bomber squadrons," Pence added. "Which ones are Seifer, Fuu, and Yazoo in again?" he asked, looking towards Hayner.

Hayner took another sip of his beer. "Seifer and Fuu are together in 2nd Black Knight Fighter Squadron in the 1st Fighter Wing in 10th Group, and Yazoo's off in the 6th Hailing Angels Bomber Squadron in the 3rd Bomber Wing in 2nd Group."

"Know which ships they're being assigned to?" Tidus asked. Hayner shook his head.

"No. And I don't even know which ships are going with which flagship either, just that the _Unity_ and _Starlight_ are going to be the heads of two different battle groups and that we're going aboard the _Starlight_. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine; probably the carriers. Oh, and yeah," he gave Tidus an apologetic look, "sorry for calling you a corporal last night. I knew you were a sergeant, just forgot for a moment."

"Eh, it's cool," Tidus replied, tipping his beer towards Hayner's.

"But none of that is helping Kairi right now," Wakka reminded them. He took a swig from his drink. "We're gonna have to figure out some way to cheer her up, yah? And _before_ her planned snowball fight tonight."

A dark-skinned youth glanced at Selphie and Olette. His black hair was cut short and he seemed slightly uneasy. "How badly shaken up is Kairi?" Jeffery asked. "I wasn't there today, and she seemed so happy last night."

"She was devastated," Olette answered. There was one slightly sceptical face from someone from their group that she had never thought would be, the golden-haired twin Anar from Destiny Islands; he was also the only one besides Hayner and Tidus to have made Sergeant. "Don't give me that look," she told him sharply, even though she was two ranks beneath him, "I was the closest one to her when it happened; I saw it. Imagine how you'd feel if Isil died in your arms because he was protecting you."

At the mention of his silver-haired twin, Anar glanced at the other seventeen-year-old with a horrified look before looking at Olette again. "Sorry, I guess I wasn't thinking. I didn't really get to know either of their digimon all that well."

"Hey Wakka, where's Charlie?" Hayner asked suddenly. "I thought Daltry was coming."

"Nah, he's hanging out with Hook, if you remember her," he said, giving them a knowing smirk. "And Vivi's busy practicing. That's all he ever does these days is practice."

"But anyway!" Selphie exclaimed. "Kairi! What are we going to do with Kairi to cheer her up?"

"Well there's the snowball fight tonight," Kia offered, taking a sip of her beer and giving a faint grimace at her discomfort of the bitterness of the brew. "Not trying _this_ kind again," she muttered, "Much too bitter."

"Try adding a bit of honey to it," Anar suggested. Kia shot him a look before glancing away. The golden-haired sergeant glanced around the table in confusion. He and Kia had always gotten along well before.

"Was it something I said?" he asked. Tidus and Hayner shrugged and nobody answered him, but everyone else knew that Kia was acting this way because she was beyond upset with Anar for crushing her hopes at romance.

"Can't," Pence said. "She might cancel the snowball fight if she doesn't get out of her room because she's still obsessing over Menelmon sacrificing herself for her."

"So we want her to think that it's not important?" Olette asked her friend incredulously.

Jeffery hastily went into damage control. "No, he's saying that we need to get her mind off of it and remind her that Menelmon will still come back when she hatches from the egg."

"Wait," Wakka said, "innit Egg, Baby, In-Training, then Rookie?"

"I don't know," Jeff answered. "I just know that Menelmon turns into Soronmon and then Soronmon turns into Thorondomon and then when Thorondomon's kicked Maleficent crony tail she reverts down to Luinmon and then Luinmon becomes Menelmon. I don't know what the stages are called."

"What if we got Sora to call her?" Kia asked. "Shouldn't talking to her boyfriend take her mind off of it?"

"Unless it just causes Kairi to start bawling her heart out to Sora," Hayner replied.

"But what if that helps, by getting it off her chest?" Olette asked.

"But Menelmon's not gone," Isil reminded them. "She's going to come back after her digiegg hatches."

"This is getting us nowhere," Tidus said suddenly. "We need to do something zany and crazy enough to get Kairi's mind out of the dumps and back into the fun-zone."

"Like what?" Selphie asked him. "Get Lord Ramius or Garda to chuck a snowball in her face and say it was from us? Bake her a pie? Sneak into her room with awesome ninja skills and steal her diary?"

Silence greeted her as everyone stared at her. It took several seconds for someone to speak. "I think," Pence began, "that just might work."

-A-D-

_1800hrs, Tuesday, December 2__nd__, 2003  
>Kairi's Room, Talerith Castle, Radiant Garden<br>Kairi_

The lights were off, the thick, warm, blankets draped around her shoulders and over her head. Wrapped in a shroud of complete darkness, Kairi withdrew from the world with her arms gently clutching the digiegg Tron had found and given her. Her hands softly ran up and down the egg's shell, feeling the warmth of the life beneath the hardness of the egg's solitary protection.

No, not solitary. She was here; she would protect this egg with everything she had from anyone that might try to hurt it. What did it matter that her left arm was still healing and completely covered in a straight cast? Nothing would harm this digiegg until it hatched and Menelmon was returned to her as long as Kairi had something to say about it. Maleficent would not win this round.

Somewhere in the back of her mind there was a small voice whispering to her, saying that she was being silly and overly zealous in her guardianship of the digiegg. But Kairi shook it away. As much as she loved the light, here, in the dark, where nothing could be seen, she and Menelmon's egg would remain safely hidden until they could come out again, as strong as they ever were.

Kairi heard the door open and saw the faintest glimmer of light from in the hallway reaching through her blankets to touch her eyes. She withdrew further onto her bed, holding the digiegg tighter to her chest. "Go away," she muttered.

There was a distinct sigh from the other side of the blankets. "Kairi… you need to come out of this room. It's dinner time."

"I'm not hungry," Kairi told the voice, denying the rumble in her stomach at the mention of food. "Just leave us here."

"Kairi…" it was irritated now. The blankets were suddenly whipped off of her and Kairi shrieked as her eyes were suddenly stung by the lights that had been turned on in her room. Blinded, Kairi summoned Crowning Flame into her hand and swung.

"You won't take her from me!" she shouted, her eyes jammed closed. Her arm thudded to a stop, her Keyblade halted by something.

"You can put that away right now girl," the voice growled. Kairi opened her eyes a smidge, still stinging from the change from darkness to light. Garda was standing above her, his hand clenched around Crowning Flame's blade and revealing that that was how he had stopped her.

Kairi wilted and dismissed her Keyblade at the sight of her former master's face. Her right hand came around and hugged the egg again. "Please, don't make me leave her," Kairi whispered. "She's all I've got left."

"Kairi…" Garda murmured.

"She's all I've got left Master," Kairi whispered. "Menelmon, Sora, Naminé, Riku, Selphie… they're all I've got. I couldn't bear it if I lost them; if I lost Menelmon again."

"Kairi…"

"What's come over me?" Kairi wondered aloud, even though her voice was still barely a whisper. "Why am I so weak? Why do I keep crying? Why do the people I love keep getting hurt? Is there something wrong with me? I'm cursed, I must be. I am just a mon—"

Her shoulders were suddenly gripped tightly as Garda sat down on the bed next to her. "Don't even think that girl," he told her forcibly. "No matter what you think or what happens, you aren't a monster. You're a good person Kairi. You are so bright and cheerful and undeniably _good_ that it hurts everyone to see you in pain."

"Even you?" Kairi wondered.

Garda nodded his head. "Even stone-hearted me. And don't for a second think that your tears make you weak. Tears shed for the people we loved are never a sign of weakness, but a true display of where our hearts lie and just how strong our feelings are. Only those who cannot or do not want to cry for the people they care for are monsters."

"But there was nothing I could do!" Kairi cried. "I could only stand by and watch as Soronmon sacrificed herself for me. I talked big back there, but I can't back it up! Even if Maleficent _has_ weakened herself, there's no way I can beat her. Her Heartless killed Soronmon right in front of me and there was nothing I could do about it. She'll kill me and the others and take over the universe and enslave everyone and nothing good will—"

_SMACK!_

"Shut your mouth right now girl," Garda told her sternly. "Look down." Kairi did, and all she saw was the white egg patterned with dark blue circles between her arms. "Look there. She is alive, _you_ are alive. Your boyfriend is alive, your sister is alive, your friends are alive, I am alive, your godfather is alive, and the people of Destiny Islands and Radiant Garden still live." He took her chin in his hand and made her look directly into his grey eyes. "As long as we are alive, we can make a change. As long as we live, we can only do our very best to make sure the future is the one we want. You want to live a long and healthy life with Sora and your friends and have a dozen little Soras and Kairis running around? Hiding here in your room lost in grief for a friend you haven't lost yet won't make that come true. Zealously guarding an egg for fear that even your friends who want nothing but the best for you might also harm it won't make your future the one you want, it'll only turn you into a crazy and cranky old woman with no children or grandchildren but her twenty cats. You're a princess but this isn't some fairy tale. You need to earn your happy ending dammit!"

Kairi smiled at the thought of herself old and a crazy cat lady. She more than smiled, she started laughing. "Master, a crazy old cat lady? Really? I thought I'd at least be cut out for something cool, like lizards or something."

"How about tarantulas?" her former master asked. Kairi's face paled terribly at the thought of the big spiders with their hairy, banded legs.

"Not funny," she said. "Those things are terrifying."

"Then I'll remind you not to go into the jungle near the mines on Nova," Garda told her. He got up from the bed and went to the door. He stood at the doorway, looking back at her. "There's supper waiting for you in the dining room. Oh, and I just remembered something. Think fast."

He whipped around, and a ball of white powder flew out of his hand and struck Kairi in the face. The auburn-haired princess blinked in sheer surprise at the cold and wet feel of the snowball that had hit her, the snow that had stuck to her cheeks already beginning to melt. Garda smirked and rushed away from the door, and Kairi clutched the digiegg tighter to her body as she leapt off of the bed. "I'll get you for that!" she crowed as she rushed out of the room she had cast into darkness and into the light, not even bothering to get her shoes on and giving chase in her sock-covered feet.

Not even a second after leaving her room, Kairi almost lost Menelmon's digiegg as she tripped over a bunch of bodies huddled outside of her door. Hayner caught the egg though. Kairi looked up from the floor, groaning at the small dull pains that would pass in a minute or two, surprised that they were here. "What are you guys…?"

"Oh, well we convinced Garda to toss a snowball at you," Selphie said. "I didn't think he'd do it actually."

"I always thought he was far too gruff and stern to do something silly like that," Isil mentioned. Kairi smiled at the silver-haired seventeen-year-old.

"Well, he is _most_ of the time, but if he can joke about how obsessing over a digiegg is going to turn me into a cranky old cat lady then he obviously isn't entirely a stick in the mud," she replied. "Hayner," Kairi said, motioning with her arm.

"Hm? Oh, yeah, sure," he told her, smiling and giving the digiegg back to Kairi. She smiled and rubbed it gently, cradling it in her shoulder.

"You look like you're with a baby or something," Kia blurted out. Kairi looked at the golden-brown haired teen, and giggled slightly.

"I guess I am," she muttered. "Come on guys, let's go eat and then I can kick your butts in another snowball fight."

"Are you sure you're alright Kairi?" Wakka asked. "I mean, you…"

"No, I'm fine," Kairi asked. Her smile that came to him was, surprisingly, genuine. "Master was right. I am still alive. We are both still alive." She looked down at the egg. "Menelmon will come back to me. We're both still here. It's not that what happened wasn't traumatic, it was, but Menelmon is still here with me, just resting inside of this egg. And… if T.K. could bounce back after Angemon sacrificed himself to defeat Devimon and save us all, then what excuse do I have to hide in my room with?"

"Well said," Jeffery told her. "And by the way, we're going to be on your side tonight."

"Really?" Kairi asked humourously. "I thought you guys would have been looking for redemption tonight by trying to take out me and my guard."

"Nah, we're joining your guard tonight," Wakka said. "Going to be a lot of players tonight, yah?"

"Redemption, smeption," Selphie said, "we protect you Kairi."

"Actually, I've got a different job for you," Kairi said, figuring correctly that Selphie had already had a couple of drinks by now, while exiting the corridor and beginning towards the stairs and, by extension, the dining room. "Refereeing." When the others looked at her curiously, she elaborated. "I'm making a levelling system for this too. All the attackers are going to get one band, and most of the front line defenders will have one band. Each band is going to represent a hit point. You get hit, you die, and give up your band to the person who hit you. Each band represents a level. Someone with two bands has two hit points and an attack power of two, but someone with three bands has an attack power of two while also having three hit points. You'd gain one attack power every other level. So a level two defender going up against a level two attacker is the same as two level ones squaring off, but a level two attacker squaring two level one defenders is able to one-shot each defender, but it will take two hits to kill him. After that, he drops his bands and gives them to the one who made the killing blow, bumping her up to a level three. "

"Why not share the experience?" Anar asked.

"Too complicated in practice," Kairi answered. "Imagine if five people, two level twos and three level ones, fought against a pair of level fours. The fours knock out a level two each, becoming two level sixes, and the three ones pepper and batter down the sixes without getting hit. How do you… wait, those are nice numbers. Throw a level five in with the two sixes and the three ones are able to down all three of them, now how would you split the seventeen bands?"

There was a pause for a few seconds, the only sound heard beyond their footsteps the track that just started playing on the speakers that Kairi _still_ had yet to actually spot.

_They said there'll be snow at Christmas,  
>They said there'll be peace on Earth,<br>But instead it just kept on raining;  
>A veil of tears for the virgin birth.<br>I remember one Christmas morning,  
>A winter's light and a distant choir,<br>And the peal of a bell and that Christmas tree smell,  
>And their eyes full of tinsel and fire.<em>

"This is too complicated and unfair," Tidus said. "Then a person could figuratively level up to like, a hundred, just by snatching killing blows off of people."

"Well I'm level fifty and my guards are level fifteen," Kairi retorted. "It wouldn't be a very good game if the final boss, me, could just die in one hit after all that the attacking team had gone through to get to me."

"Then why don't you guys say, 'oh yeah, by the way, you need to hit my guards fifteen times in order to kill them, and I'll die at fifty hits, but all it takes to knock down any of you is a single snowball to the face, or chest, or two to the arms or legs' because that would be a lot easier to implement than your levelling concept," Kia recommended.

"So, BOOM! Headshot, BOOM! Chestshot, or BOOM-BOOM! Armshot and legshot?" Kairi asked, "And fifteen hits anywhere on the Royal Guards and fifty anywhere on me?"

"Exactly," Isil said as they left the staircase. "Now you've got it."

_They sold me a dream of Christmas,  
>They sold me a silent night.<br>They told me a fairy story,  
>'Till I believed in the Israelite.<br>And I believed in Father Christmas,  
>And I looked to the sky with excited eyes,<br>Then I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn,  
>And I saw him and through his disguise.<em>

"Which radio station is this?" Selphie asked suddenly.

Kairi frowned and bit her bottom lip for under a second as she tried to remember. "Uh, I think it's 97.8 Radiant Rock with their 'December Nonstop Christmas Playlist'. It's good."

"So they play nothing but Christmas music all December?" Selphie prodded.

"Uh… they started while we were fighting in the Zeus Cup, and I think they go until noon on Boxing Day," Kairi murmured, "but I'm not really sure."

"Either way," Olette told them, "we need a station like that in Twilight Town."

"Same here," said Tidus. "Although I'm pretty sure we can do without listening to _Let it Snow_."

"But Michael Bublé's covered that song," Kairi countered. "_And he's so awesome_."

"Crushing much Kairi?" Olette asked.

Kairi's retort was swift. "I love Sora, but he's _Michael fucking Bublé!_ If he sang me a song and asked me out, I'd go on a date with him in a heartbeat. It'd be almost as if Tony Valtina who plays Justin in Knights of the Ordinary asked me out."

"Well Justin's hot," Kia said, like it was the most obvious thing ever.

"I _know_!" Selphie added. "Did you see him last night in the pool with Heather?"

_I wish you a hopeful Christmas,  
>I wish you a brave new year.<br>All anguish, pain, and sadness,  
>Leave your heart and let your road be clear.<br>They said there'll be snow at Christmas,  
>They said there'll be peace on Earth,<br>Hallelujah! Noel! Be it Heaven or Hell,  
>The Christmas we get we deserve.<em>

"Heather's a bitch for practically cheating on Randy," Kia spat. "I know that they aren't together, yet, but come on! It's so obvious that they like each other!"

"Well can you blame her?" Selphie asked. "It's freaking _Justin_ in a pool with her!"

"That's shallow," Kairi remarked.

"Um, _hello_? Did you hear yourself a second ago Kairi? You just said that even though you're completely head-over-heels deliriously in love with Sora that you'd still go on a date with the guy who plays Justin if he were to ask you out."

Kairi blushed and fought back. "Hey, I'd only go out with him once, after that I'd be perfectly content with never seeing him again."

"Code for: I just want to fuck him in a one-night-stand and get away with it," Selphie said.

"S—Selphie! How can you even say that?"

"Because I'd tap that too," Olette said. She turned towards her boyfriend. "No offence Hayner, but he does beat you in the looks department."

Grumbling, Hayner shoved his hands in his pockets right as they reached the door to the dining room. "Sure. Thanks for clearing up that question. Now we can go to bed at night, knowing that our girls would all love to have sex with the hot guys from SV shows more than they would with us."

"Cheer up Hayner," Jeffery said. "They're just fantasising, it can't hurt anything."

"Except their pride," Selphie giggled. "Ooh, I wonder what Sora would say if he found out?"

"That's it, you guys aren't my friends anymore and can all die fiery deaths at the snowball fight tonight. Good day!"

"Aw," Tidus teased, "Kairi's blushing angrily."

"I say good day!"

-A-D-

She forgave them an hour later after slipping a snowball right down both Selphie's and Olette's shirts. Just hearing the brunettes' squeals when the cold snow made contact with the warm skin between their boobs was payback enough. Of course, the offending party was also made to take payback in kind, and got one on the back of her neck to slither all the way down her back and soak into her panties, but that only happened _after_ the game when everyone still interested was heading back to the castle in one big mob. Kairi'd shrieked and chased after both Olette and Selphie, Selphie having distracted Kairi while Olette snuck up to dump the snow down her neck. Anyone nearby had burst out laughing, later commenting on just how priceless and cute Kairi's shriek at the sudden cold was.

Kairi's team won again in brilliant fashion. Only a couple of times did anyone from the attacking team even make it to her throne room in the ice fortress, and when they did, Kairi matched every snowball they threw at her with a perfectly fired tiny fireball that melted the snowball in a midair collision before pelting her attackers with snowballs of her own.

She was the final boss, why should she fight fair?

But cold water sticking to her bum and slowly drying was not how she wanted to spend the night while sitting with the six hundred people sitting and laughing and joking in the lavish celebratory dining hall on the castle's ground floor. Normally the servants and guards ate here by themselves, while Kairi, Naminé, and any guests of theirs ate in their own dining room on the second floor, but this was the only room big enough, besides the audience chamber, to accommodate so many patrons. Cookies and hot chocolate were abundant, as Kairi had proclaimed earlier in the day, and the Christmas music from 98.7 Radiant Rock kept on coming out of the hidden speakers.

_Silver bells (silver bells),  
>Silver bells (silver bells),<br>It's Christmastime in the city.  
>Ring-a-ling (ring-a-ling),<br>Hear them ring (hear them ring),  
>Soon it will be Christmas Day!<em>

Kairi laughed at some joke that Tidus had told involving a genie, a Stracan, and a Felranite _(A Stracan and a Felranite are walking together in the jungles near the volcano on Dunash when they find a strange bottle. Picking it up, they rub the bottle and out pops a genie. He thanks the two for freeing him from the bottle and says that he will grant them each one wish. The Stracan goes first, saying that he wants Straca to become its own nation away from the rest of the Islands, all Stracans brought back to the island and all non-Stracans returned to their own islands, and for a hundred-metre wall of solid concrete to be erected around the entire island to keep the others out. The genie says, "Done", and the Stracan is gone with his wish granted. The genie then turns to the Felranite, who is smiling. The Felranite says to the genie, "Fill it with water.")_, when she felt the communicator that she had returned to her pocket (she hadn't taken it with her to the press conference she'd given earlier in the day because she didn't want it to go off) start to vibrate and heard her incoming text message ringtone.

"_(Whoa-oh-oh-oh)  
>I need you.<br>(Whoa-oh-oh-oh)  
>I need you here, I need you now;<br>I need security somehow.  
>(Whoa-oh-oh-oh oh-oh)<br>I need you, like you would not believe;  
>You're the only thing I want,<br>'Cause you're everything, everything I need."_

She fished the communicator out of her pocket, noting the looks of the others with her at the table, and smiled for a moment as she saw the name at the top of the screen. "It's Sora," she announced, answering their implied question. Then she frowned at the words on the screen as she read them out loud. "Kairi what's wrong? Why aren't you answering me?" Scrolling back through her missed notifications, Kairi's eyebrows rose as she saw that she had missed two texts from her boyfriend, and no less than seven calls. All of the texts seemed to be asking her what was wrong or what had happened, and the first ones came in at…

"Oh gods," Kairi whispered. "He felt my pain."

"What?" Pence asked.

"Sora," Kairi answered, looking at the jet-haired teen. "When Menelmon sacrificed herself for me, he must have felt my pain through the connection between our hearts." She turned back to look at the communicator. "He must be sick with worry by now."

"Then put him out of his misery and tell him everything's mostly alright," Tidus told her, glancing down at the egg in Kairi's lap. She nodded and started dialling, leaving on the video setting so that she'd be able to see as well as talk with Sora, and that anyone else at the table would be able to do the same.

He answered almost immediately. His face was almost frantic. "Kairi, what happened? Why didn't you answer?"

The look on his face was just enough to cause Kairi to laugh. "Sora you lazy bum, if you'd _really_ wanted to talk to me right away you should have sent a message using the Light like I taught you. Didn't you even listen to my voicemail message?"

He glanced away from her and began rubbing the back of his head. Kairi took the opportunity to get a look at Sora's surroundings. He seemed to be in a room in a house, the walls of the room painted a soft shade of blue. No, that was because it was night and there wasn't enough light to get an accurate depiction of the colour, but the guestroom of a house probably wasn't a bad guess. "Uh… I kinda tuned it out," he said apologetically.

Kairi sighed. "Well next time, listen to the message, okay?"

"Alright. But seriously, what happened? One minute I'm going to get ice cream with Aiwemon, and the next, my heart's been hit by a freight train of pain coming from yours. What happened Kairi?"

The auburn-haired princess cast her eyes downward and bit her bottom lip. "Sora… Menelmon died today."

The stunned silence lasted for only a few seconds before Aiwemon shoved his way past his partner and took up the majority of the screen. "What? What do you mean she died? How? What happened?"

"Kairi…" Sora choked out in disbelief, "I'm so sorry. Do you want me with you? I'll come back right now if you want me to."

"No, it's okay," Kairi told him. "I'm alright. Stay where you are and keep doing what you're doing. As for how it happened…"

She told them of the fight earlier in the day, and made sure to meticulously describe the Scorpionkin Heartless as well as warning him that if he encountered one to stay as far away from the purple acid goop as possible.

"How are you okay though?" Sora asked as Aiwemon slowly flapped off of Sora's shoulder to go to an opposite corner of the room. "I mean, Menelmon…" He gasped as Kairi brought the egg into his sight. "Is that…?"

"Yes," Kairi answered with a smile and a tiny tear leaking out of her right eye. "It's her digiegg. I can be alright because Master smacked some sense back into me and because she's still here with me. It'll be a little while before I even see Luinmon again if how long it took Angemon's digiegg to even get back to Tokomon is any indication, but she's still here with me."

Sora sighed with relief. "That's good. Hey, this might not be the best timing, but I've got a question I want to ask you."

"Go ahead."

"What would you say if I told you I want to grow a beard?"

Selphie laughed next to Kairi, but all cerebral function on Kairi's part ground to a halt. She gave Sora a blank stare, her mind wholly centred around the word, _what?_

Ten seconds passed, Kairi leaving it to Sora to break the silence. She could not comprehend just _what_ Sora had to be thinking to think that he should grow a beard. Did he think that she wanted him to grow a beard? A big, bushy, messy beard that would be hard to keep clean and look bad anyway? Not to mention that all of that hair would be rubbing up against her anytime she wanted to touch his face or kiss him. A little stubble was fine, but a _beard!_

"Kairi…?"

"What are you smoking and why aren't you sharing?" Kairi asked him, deadpan. Selphie and Olette laughed next to her.

"Maybe I should grow a beard," Hayner muttered.

Olette rounded on him in an instant. "Against regulations and _hell no!_"

"So it's okay for me?" Sora asked Kairi, hopeful.

"Ask me again in four years when we're twenty and have lost brain cells from whatever it is that you're smoking behind our backs," she returned.

"But Kairi, this is important."

"I don't care Sora. No."

He scowled. "Why did I think you'd understand? You're only a girl after all."

_That_ got Kairi incensed. "_Excuse me!_ Please, forgive this _mere_ girl for only wanting to be able to kiss her boyfriend without the unpleasant feeling of coarse hair rubbing against her lips or the fear of coughing up hairballs."

"Kairi you wouldn't cough up hairballs unless you actually kept on kissing the beard instead of me, which I know you won't."

"No means no Sora. I don't want you with a big, bushy, scratchy bird's nest all over your face!"

"Yeah, you tell him Kairi!" Selphie crowed, rooting her on.

"What do you mean bird's nest?" Sora growled. "Just being able to grow a beard would be great. Think of all the great people who've got beards! Merlin's got a beard, Master Yen Sid's got a beard, Gandalf's got a beard, Ansem the Wise and your real dad had a beard! Maybe a beard's a status symbol and I want one too? Ever think of that?"

"They're wizards and a scientist and a king and you're not!" Kairi retorted. "_You_ are a sixteen-year-old asshole who's still growing and still developing with a girlfriend who, as of this current moment, thinks that you with a beard is horrendous!"

"Kairi—" Sora began harshly.

"What would you say if I suddenly decided to stop shaving my legs?" Kairi interrupted.

Sora's look back at her was blank for a second. "What?"

"What if, hypothetically, I told you that I wanted to let my leg hair grow out?" Kairi asked.

"Um, Kairi, that's ew," Olette said. Kairi promptly shushed her.

"I'd ask you if you had a particular reason for growing it out like keeping your legs warm and then I'd accep—"

"Bullshit Sora," Kairi spat. "You'd hate it because then your hands wouldn't be running down the smooth skin of my legs because there'd be icky hair all over it, right?"

Sora was quiet for a few seconds in defeat before grumbling, "Yes."

"Same thing with your face," Kairi replied. "So, as your girlfriend, I'm telling you that right now I _don't_ want to see you with a beard. A bit of rough stubble is fine and clean-shaven is better, but I'm putting my foot down with a firm 'no'. Got it?"

"What about not a full beard but a goatee around the chin, mouth, and upper lip?"

"Got it!"

Sora threw his hand in the air. "Alright! Fine! No beard! But seriously Kairi, the goatee?"

"Four years Sora," Kairi replied firmly. "Four years, and you can ask me again."

"But that's like, _four years_ away Kairi!" Sora moaned.

Kairi suddenly noticed the lack of chatter in the hall and glanced behind her. Quite a few faces were turned towards her and the people at her table. "What?" she asked them. "Sora wants to grow a beard and I don't want him to and we're having a fight. Does everyone think that our relationship is all sugar and rainbows all the time? We're normal people too you know."

Selphie glanced between Kairi and Sora on the screen as Kairi's frown deepened. "Okay, I know that both of you are stubborn as bulls and everything, but what's got the two of you so angsty? Kairi, I know what's up with you, and, what _was_ up with you until yesterday but I'm glad you're not freaking out to me about it now, but what's bugging you Sora?"

"My automail's acting up," Sora replied instantly, looking a little bit relieved at the opportunity to speak about it. "It's been catching on nothing and just randomly stopping or not moving when I tell it to. Kinda like its asleep or something."

"Well that's odd," Kairi said, this time frowning in interest. "Has it ever done that before?"

Sora shook his head 'no'. "But that's just a minor problem. I can deal with it. But, Kairi, guys, I can't swim anymore."

Kairi's eyes flew open in surprise and Selphie gasped. "What! No way! You've been able to swim since you were two!"

"Yeah man," Tidus said. "We were in the same swim class. What do you mean you can't swim anymore?"

In answer, Sora extended his left arm. "It's too heavy. When I get in the water, it drags me down and tries to drown me." He sighed heavily and dropped his eyes.

Kairi gulped and tried to meet her boyfriend's eyes, but Sora still wasn't looking directly into the screen of his communicator. Not being able to swim after years of taking the skill for granted, especially when living in a place surrounded on all sides by water…this was a huge blow to Sora, and she hadn't really helped his self-esteem much by shooting him down in his quest to grow a beard.

But she was still selfish enough to not renege on her demand that he not do it. She'd given herself a window of four years to decide whether or not she'd like Sora to actually grow one. "Sora I'm sorry," she said. "I had no idea that you were—"

"No, it's okay Kairi," he answered. "I'll figure out a way to deal with it, I guess. And if I do end up having the beginnings of a beard, it'll probably be because I'm lazy, so don't feel bad if you have to remind me to shave when I'm getting too hairy for you."

Kairi smiled. "So long as you don't plan on becoming as hairy as the Beast, I think I'll be fine." She reached out and took a cookie from a plate, dipped it in a glass of hot chocolate, and placed it in her mouth.

"Kairi," Sora quickly addressed her, "what's that?"

Swallowing, Kairi answered pleasantly, "Shortbread Christmas cookie."

"YOU MADE YOUR SHORTBREAD COOKIES AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME!"

_It's coming on Christmas,  
>They're cutting down trees;<br>Putting up reindeer, singing songs of joy and peace.  
>Oh I wish I had a river, I could skaaate away on…<em>

"Oops," Kairi said, giggling. "I forgot, I had planned not to tell you so I could surprise you with them when you got back. Oh well. Guess this means you're going to want to get back fast now huh?"

"Heck yeah I'm going to want to rush back to the Garden," Sora answered. "My mouth's already watering just thinking about them."

Kairi slightly raised an eyebrow. "And wanting to get back quickly has nothing to do with missing me?"

Sora grinned. "Well, maybe just a _little_ bit," he teased, "those cookies are _really_ good though. Probably good enough to avoid talking to the press if I had one on me."

"I think you've got it backwards dude," Hayner laughed. "If Kairi wasn't even around, then those cookies wouldn't exist."

"Okay," Sora laughed. "Now I've got my priorities straight."

"Thanks Sora," Kairi said, preparing to blow him a kiss through the communicator.

"I've got to thank Garda for his stone golem breaking Kairi's arm."

"Sora!" Kairi whined playfully.

_But it don't snow here,  
>It stays pretty green,<br>Make a lot of money then I'm gonna quit this crazy scene.  
>Oh, I wish I had a river, I could skaaate away on…<br>I wish I had a river so loooong…._

"You have to admit that Hayner's right Kairi," Sora told her. "If Garda hadn't called Cho'kal, you wouldn't have had your arm broken and ribs cracked and been forced to stay behind, so you wouldn't have been able to bake us cookies for when we come back victorious to pick you up and go out again."

"But you're still more excited about the cookies than seeing me again," Kairi teased.

"Hey, they're great cookies, and part of the reason is because _you're _the one who bakes them, I might add."

Kairi smiled as they continued flirting across the screen. "You are too sweet, even though we were feuding over facial hair not five minutes ago."

"That's because we love each other too much. And I love those cookies of yours just as much. I'm serious. If I had my way, I'd kidnap you, dress you up in a skimpy maid outfit and put you in a kitchen just to bake those cookies for me every day. Oh, and what was that thing Selphie said you were stressing about?"

"Too much information Sora!" Kia blurted out, though she only had peripheral sight of Sora on the screen.

"Oh, I started my period yesterday, and before you go off the wall about being able to fight today as soon as it started I grabbed the iron pills Dr. Fraiser prescribed for us, and I had been _worried_, not freaking out Selphie, because I was two days late and thought something was going wrong with me."

"Two days late doesn't seem so…" Sora started.

"I've been late maybe three times a year since I started having them Sora and each time it's only been a day and I've _never_ been early. My cycle's like a clock ("Okay seriously, _Tee-Em-I_ guys! _Tee-Em-I!_"), and as for you kidnapping me, well…" Kairi whispered as she leaned in closer to the screen. "If you did that, I'd have to demand fair compensation from my captor."

"And what sort of payment for your services would you be looking for?" Sora asked with a devious smile, filing away the previously rambled explanation of Kairi's in some undisclosed part of his brain.

Kairi's answer came prepared with a dash of her own devilishness, "Whatever I ask for."

"We'll leave that open to negotiation, my little kitty."

"Then you won't be getting any of my cookies, and kitty?"

"I could always steal some when you're not looking, and you're as cunning as a cat and I've decided that I like it more when you purr for me."

Half the table gave the girl with the communicator a mildly amused/disgusted stare. "Could you two please save the dirty talk for the bedroom please?" Pence asked.

"Fine," Kairi said simply. She turned to the screen. "Give me a sec Sora, I'll call you back when I'm in my room." He nodded, and she ended the call. Kairi grabbed one more cookie and devoured it, making a little bit more small talk with the rest of the table before standing up and announcing that she was turning in for the night, commenting on how much fun the night was and how successful the defenders were, again, at keeping their Princess 'alive'.

As she headed up to her room, thoughts of speaking to Sora in private on the front of her mind, she recognized that even injured and taking care of Menelmon's egg and baby form when she hatched, Kairi had a big three days in front of her and that her leisure time was over. Like Garda had said, she was still alive, and she would have to do everything she could in what time she still had here on Radiant Garden to ensure that she and as many others as possible would stay that way.

She vowed to Sora not to die, so she would survive and earn that happy ending they desired.

-A-D-

_Songs used in this chapter:_

I Believe in Father Christmas_ – Emerson, Lake, and Palmer_

Silver Bells – _Andy Williams version_

_Kairi's ringtone – _I Need You _– Relient K_

River _– Robert Downy Jr. version_

_**May the Grace of the Valar Protect You**_

_Shire Folk_


	4. Nightmare

_I'm pretty confident that this chapter's bumped it up to 'M' now…_

_Disclaimer: No, just no._

-A-D-

**Garden of Snow and Ice**

Nightmare

She was in the streets of Radiant Garden, fighting against a never-ending tide of Heartless. Crowning Flame was glowing brightly with light, and all around her were her friends and allies. Soronmon flew above, raining watermelon-sized icicles down upon a small group of Armoured Knights. Ohtarmon yelled, "Deciding Swing!" from somewhere close to her right, and Kairi's peripheral vision picked up the sight of his glowing mace obliterating a Neoshadow that had jumped towards him. A claymore shot a Morning Star up in the air.

Sora flashed in front of everyone else, intoning, "Shine your Radiant Light, Cosmos!" Remembrance flared with light, and its form changed completely to become that of Cosmos, the double-sided Kingdom Key. Sora swung his weapon in a horizontal slice in the direction of an Invisible. It paused for a second, then it started to shake wildly and shafts of golden light spewed out from it for a moment before the Heartless exploded entirely, three Keyblades radiating with light having cut it down from the inside.

Kairi shouted, "Get lost!" and swung her Keyblade down. At once a flare of white flame coursed down the cobblestone road, the flames consuming all the Heartless in its path. Hearts rose up into the sky, and Kairi ran on, seeing that the path ahead began to branch out and narrow. It would be too tight a squeeze for all of them.

"Split up!" Sora said, his three summoned Keyblades hovering around him. "Naminé, you and Riku take Kia, Tidus, and Anar and go down that way. Ohtarmon, Roxas, and I will go down this way with Olette and Wakka. Kairi, you, Yuffie, and Soronmon keep going up the middle. Hayner, Pence, Jeff, and Isil will hold the rear."

"Got it," Kairi said, nodding at Sora. He nodded back at her and they split up into the groups Sora suggested. Barely ten seconds after breaking up black mist formed on the ground in front of Kairi and Yuffie and four hulking Invisibles floated there, blocking the girls' path.

"You guys can't have the Garden!" Yuffie roared, leaping ahead of Kairi. The ninja vanished in a puff of black smoke and reappeared almost instantly behind the furthest Invisible. Flower of Wutai shot out and stabbed the Invisible in the back of the neck.

Almost immediately after Yuffie had used her ninjitsu, Kairi flash-stepped from her position to directly in front of the lead Invisible. Crowning Flame flared, and Kairi sliced her Keyblade diagonally across the chest of the much larger Heartless. Darkness spilled out of its wound and it clutched at its chest with its free arm as Kairi fell back to the ground, now holding her weapon out defensively in front of her, reminding herself that two uninjured Invisibles were still there.

"Blizzard's Bite!"

Reflexively, Kairi leapt back as the frosty image of Soronmon's head crashed to the ground, encasing the one Invisible that couldn't dodge in time in a prison of ice. Now there was only one that hadn't been hit by the Keyblade Wielders and digimon's quick attack pattern. That one came forward fast on Kairi, swinging its sword in broad, powerful arcs meant to hack the Princess to pieces. Crowning Flame met it at every turn, rising up to block the sword's initial strike first. Kairi pivoted on her right foot, turning her body aside and parrying the second swing harmlessly to the side with only one hand on the Keyblade's handle. She returned the second hand and faced the Heartless fully again, this time shuffling slightly to her right while bringing her arms around to have Crowning Flame dip towards the ground at Kairi's left, once more stopping the Heartless' sword.

She smiled. It had over-extended itself on that last attack, and was now bent too far forward. With a yell Kairi sliced her Keyblade forward, cutting the Heartless in the chest as she had the last one. She did not relent, unleashing another two quick slices into the Invisible and leaving it fading into darkness. Kairi turned quickly to regard the other one that she'd wounded, already manoeuvring her Keyblade into a position to defend against the expected attack, but found Yuffie standing there in the midst of the Heartless' released heart rising into the sky. The two girls nodded at one another before continuing onwards, pausing only to quickly finish off the one Soronmon had frozen.

A Shadow jumped out at Yuffie from nowhere, and the kunoichi almost casually whacked it into oblivion with a single swing of her Keyblade, never pausing as they ventured further into the heart of the city swarming with the creatures of darkness. Another intersection was up ahead of them, this one blocked by no less than six Charr Heartless. From this distance, Kairi could make out two Blade Storms, one Hunter, two Flame Wielders, and an Overseer.

"If they survive this, get the Overseer," Kairi told Yuffie and Soronmon. She waited to see both of them nod at her before pausing and beginning her favourite chant. "Sing now the hymn of the phoenix, the eternal fires of heaven and of hell; let Tartarus be forever lit by your falling effigy. I stand at the maw of the dragon of the skies to open its blazing gullet. Let the flame of the heavens rain down upon my enemy. Flame Style 22: Skyfyre!"

Kairi's back arched and her extended forwards. Clouds came into the sky above them, flashing as if crimson lightning was racing concealed inside of them. Fireballs began to descend from them, fireballs the size of full-grown cows. Yuffie and Soronmon continued towards the group of Charr Heartless that held the intersection along with a number of smaller and weaker types, including three Blue Rhapsodies. Only at the last second, with the fireballs from heaven careening towards them, did the Heartless look up.

There was no time for them to run. Bestial roars and squeaks issued from the impact zone for nigh on six seconds, barely more than half of the spell's duration, before all that could be heard was the roar of the descending meteors and the bone-shattering impact of them on the cobblestone road. Flames still burned and smoke rose from the intersection as the sky cleared of the murderous clouds Kairi had summoned, but no Heartless remained to come out and challenge the two Keyblade Wielders and Champion-level digimon.

"I think ya got 'em Kairi," Yuffie said, smiling approvingly at the younger teenager.

Kairi nodded her head, allowing herself a bit of pride. "Yeah."

Soronmon gasped from above and the fires in front of them suddenly died out, being replaced by three Scorpionkin. Kairi's eyes widened in sudden fear and the princess took a step back, swivelling her eyes around between the six scythe-like arms and the three bulbous mouths on the ends of the scorpion tails that would spit out deadly acidic poison.

"What are—" Yuffie started, taking in the sight of the large Heartless before the wall of a building next to them suddenly collapsed, revealing eight Charr Hunter Heartless standing with bows outstretched, flaming arrows nocked in the bowstrings. The one in the lead roared aloud from its black head, and all eight fired at the surprised pair.

"Reflega!" Kairi screamed, forming the honeycomb shield around them just in the nick of time. The lead's arrow still made it through, and it tore at the side of Yuffie's face as the missile glanced her cheek. The raven-haired kunoichi cried out in sudden pain as her blood began to flow from the cut and the nearby skin turned pink, but it was nowhere near as horrible as what would have happened had the arrow been one inch closer.

"Polar Chill!"

Kairi looked up as Soronmon flapped her wings, sending a volley of icicles at the team of Heartless that had just assaulted her and Yuffie, but Kairi could care less about the Charr, what mattered more were the three Scorpionkin that were blocking the intersection. "No! Soronmon!"

Her cry had barely reached her digimon before three blobs of acidic purple goo spewed out from the bulbous stinger-mouths of the Scorpionkin. There was no time for Kairi, Yuffie, or Soronmon to do anything besides turn to look at the approaching attack in horror.

The great ice eagle screeched in agony as all three of the blobs struck. One hit the middle of her left wing, eating through her feathers and flesh and laying bone bear to the biting cold wind. Another landed square between the wing joints at her shoulders, and the third sizzled into the many of feathers on Soronmon's upper neck. Kairi's tortured cry of her partner's name was joined by her grief and panic-stricken thoughts of, _Not again, not again, not again!_

What remained of Soronmon glowed with bright golden light and the Heartless and city around them turned to mist in a red-clouded landscape with no distinguishable floor or ceiling. Kairi and Yuffie looked around for a brief moment before the glow that was Soronmon's wretched body shrank down to the size and shape of a digiegg. Kairi's heart lurched and she started for the egg, but she'd barely taken three steps towards it when a staff plunged right through it, shattering the digiegg into a million bytes of grey data that would never be reconfigured to soar in the skies again.

Maleficent held the staff.

The Dragon Knight of Radiant Garden and the Wielder of Night stared, petrified. The sorceress said nothing to them, but her mouth opened and she let loose a cackle that stole all the will from Kairi's limbs. Kairi's limp grasp let go of her Keyblade, and Crowning Flame clattered to the ground before vanishing in a shimmer of light. Suddenly the two Wielders were grasped from behind, their arms wrung behind their backs and manacles clamped over their wrists. Kairi instantly felt drained of all her strength, and could barely cry out as whatever had captured her shoved her to the ground, kneeing her back and grinding her face into the floor.

"Did you honestly think you could defeat me?" Maleficent asked at last, her amusement at the defiance Kairi had previously shown clear. "Allow me to show you your folly." There came a sound so familiar to Kairi that it brought her hope: the sound of a Keyblade being summoned. Then pain came to her as her hair was pulled back with a jerk, and Nobody's Pride passed in front of Kairi's eyes to rest against her throat.

"Naminé?" Kairi asked in a fearful whisper.

"What have you done to Riku you bitch!" Yuffie screamed from next to Kairi. The red-head couldn't see who held Yuffie in a position mirroring her own, but she could just make out Way to the Dawn against the raven-haired kunoichi's neck.

"Why, they're right here," Maleficent purred, waving her staff.

"KAIRI! Yuffie!"

"Naminé! Riku!" Kairi groaned, the knee on her back digging into it painfully. The flaxen-haired Wielder of the Moon appeared in front of Maleficent, being held spread-eagle in the air by cords of darkness. Her chainmail had been removed, as had the rest of her armour, leaving her in a white slip and pants. Riku was beside her, his wrists and ankles also bound in black cords. While Naminé's head was up and her eyes were looking at Kairi in a wild and frightened state, she at least seemed unharmed. Riku, however, had his head bowed, and his limbs were limp; blood ran in lines down his arms and dripped from his feet.

"What did you do to them?" Yuffie shouted. "Riku! RIKU! Answer me!"

Riku made no movement to Yuffie's desperate plea, and Maleficent spoke again. "The boy has been punished for his insolence," she told them. The sorceress chuckled. "There was nothing more satisfying than seeing him cut down by his own Keyblade."

"Riku no…" Kairi whispered as Riku still made no further movement. She was too horrified to cry, even as she realized that he was dead.

"Kairi run!" Naminé shouted. "Yuffie! Run! Live! Find Sora and Roxas! Get o—!"

"SILENCE!" Maleficent spat. She raised her staff, and a bolt of darkness burst into Naminé's back. The blonde screamed before retching in agony, nearly losing the contents of her stomach. Sweat exploded onto her skin, and her breathing became haggard and heavy. "I think it's time I taught you a lesson you won't soon forget," Maleficent declared. She turned her head, and a figure approached from out of the red mists.

Kairi's blood froze. "Hey doll," said Anti, the demonic-looking Heartless lewdly grinning at her.

"Where's Sora?" Kairi whispered. "Sora! SORA PLEASE! Where are you?"

Anti, Maleficent, and whoever had both Kairi and Yuffie held down laughed. Tendrils of black darkness rose out of Anti's thick pectoral muscles, and snaked their way around Naminé's body. "Wha-what are you—EEE!" the Princess screamed as one tendril slipped under her shirt and tore it off, revealing the girl's bare chest. Instantly the same tendril and another began attacking her breasts, stroking and prodding them, circling around the girl's rapidly hardening nipples. "No! Let go! _Don't touch me there!_" Anti only laughed.

Suddenly aware of what she was witnessing, Kairi tried to look away only for the edge of Nobody's Pride to be placed against her neck again and her hair jerked back painfully once more. "You will watch this," said the voice of the one holding her down.

"Kairi… don't look," Naminé pleaded as tears already started to fall from her eyes. The girl gasped suddenly as another tendril went down the front of her pants. Naminé tried to cross her legs, only for the tendrils holding onto her ankles to tighten and force them to spread.

"You bastards!" Yuffie tried to snarl, though it came out closer to a whimper. "Let her go!"

Maleficent cackled and Anti gave Yuffie a look that said, "Once I'm done with her, you're next". Fabric tore and suddenly Naminé was naked before them, two tendrils still massaging her smaller breasts and another forcing its way into her mouth. Silent tears poured down from her closed eyes.

Two new tendrils reared up, and plunged.

-A-D-

"NAMINÉ!"

Radiant Garden's auburn-haired heir bolted upright, sweat rolling down her neck and forcing her pink tank top and flannel pyjama bottoms to stick to her skin. She realized that she was in near-complete darkness, and threw her right arm out, calling for light. Her heart answered her, sending out a ball of light as big as her fist that glowed with a torch's intensity. She only had to shield her eyes for a moment before Kairi was able to take in her surroundings. A four-poster queen-sized bed with pink blankets and white sheets that had been half chucked off, a bedside table with a reading lamp, a vanity with several beautification items on it, a writing desk, an armoire, the door to a closet, the door out of the room…

She was in her room in Talerith Castle.

Kairi placed a hand to her racing heart and took a deep breath, trying to calm down. A nightmare, that was all it had been; just a dream. She hadn't been fighting in the streets of Radiant Garden, she hadn't seen Riku, killed and his body paraded in front of herself and Yuffie; she hadn't seen Naminé getting tentacle-raped by Anti; and she hadn't helplessly watched Soronmon die again and her digiegg sma—

_Where's Menelmon's egg!_ Kairi thought, her fear and panic returning. _I'm sure I had it _right here_ beside me!_ Looking over the edge to her left, Kairi sighed in relief as she spotted the digiegg in the light of her spell, lying perfect on the red carpet of the floor. It must've rolled off during her sleep. Kairi scooped the digiegg up with her good right arm and embraced it, giving it a light kiss near its top while rocking the egg back and forth.

It wasn't real. It hadn't happened; it was just a dream. "Just a dream," she whispered to herself.

_But was it? Was it really just a dream, or was it a vision of a possible future like my other dream or some new trick of Maleficent's? Did she send this to me to break me or did she… No! Shut up Kairi, you're psyching yourself out! Maleficent didn't do this, just my overactive imagination._

"I need some water," the Wielder of Light muttered aloud. Gently removing the last parts of her blankets and sheets from her body—she must have been kicking them off in her sleep—Kairi got out of bed, keeping the digiegg close to her body.

Her bare feet padded down the carpet in the middle of the hallway, and Kairi glanced out the windows in the dimly lit corridor. The sky was clear of clouds, and the remaining stars and moon shone brightly onto the world. Kairi shook her head as she gazed upon the moon. _I'm being silly, Naminé wouldn't lose. You can't fight the moonlight._

Humming escaped her lips as she continued down to the bathroom, but even after draining a glass of water and splashing her face, she still couldn't get Soronmon's disintegrating body or Naminé's shriek out of her head. "Maybe I should tell Sora," she wondered. Glancing at the digiegg, Kairi shook her head. "No," she whispered to her reflection, "Sora has enough to worry about. Even though nothing's happened on Ohana yet, it's only a matter of time. I can't go waking him up just because of a nightmare." She looked at the digiegg again.

"_Kairi-REOW!"_

Indigo eyes were covered by slender newly-calloused hands. Within moments they were wet. She thought she'd cried herself out already. "What's going on with me?" she mumbled.

"Kairi?"

Him. Of course it was him, with his towering frame and thick, knotted arms. They opened slightly, and Kairi was within them. Her heart felt like it was breaking, tearing open the old wounds that she thought had closed; the wounds left over from the deaths of her parents. His embrace was so strong now, so caring, so much like her father's when she'd made it home after the Organization had kidnapped her.

"I heard you screaming," Garda whispered. Kairi stiffened, suddenly afraid that her former master was going to reprimand her and tell her that she should be strong or that dreams shouldn't scare her or something of the sort, but nothing could have been farther from the truth when he continued. "It's okay. You can cry in front of me; you don't have to try to be a proper little princess for me."

And just like that, all the pressure that had been slowly building on Kairi's shoulders since she'd spent her first night in the castle and begun to learn more about her past and heritage was gone. She could be herself, without fear of repercussion. And right now, all that she, Kairi, wanted to do was cry.

Ovan Ramius quietly closed the door behind him as his goddaughter sobbed into Garda's white shirt.

-A-D-

_Yeah… thoughts, comments, suggestions?_

_**May the Grace of the Valar Protect You**_

_Shire Folk_


	5. Hockey

_Greetings programs! I'm updating during the summer, isn't that an interesting change?_

_So, some news. You'll probably be a little disappointed in this, but I actually have chapters for **The War** completed and approved, I'm just withholding them until the summer's over and I return home. Hey, I need some kind of buffer ready for when I spend a month writing out the battle that you all know is coming soon._

_Anywho..._

_Disclaimer: (Shire strokes his chin, which is now devoid of a beard due to needing it shaved off by orders of his boss' boss and because his cosplay for Anime-a-thon won't allow it, and drops what he would have written for the disclaimer it in the middle of a field in the gopher capital of Alberta) "The gophers can have this thing."_

-A-D-

**Garden of Snow and Ice**

Hockey

"Can I play?"

The question was simple, easy to understand, and relatively easy to answer…if it was someone of the same sex asking the question, or someone who didn't look quite as peculiar. The nine boys looked around at each other before looking back at the girl. She stood at average height, roughly five-foot seven; had lovely indigo eyes; was wearing a raspberry beret overtop a head of shoulder-length auburn hair; and was wearing a winter jacket of white, fuchsia, and grey; white snow pants and boots; and black mittens. In addition, the left arm of her jacket was empty and there was a small yellow…_blob_ sitting on her right shoulder and a tiny dragon that looked to be made completely out of fire on her left.

The breath of the nine boys came out in hot steaming clouds as they looked at the girl, each one of them clutching a straight wooden stick that held a curved flat piece on the end. All of them were dressed in simple sweaters with either hats, earmuffs, or nothing on their heads and pairs of blue jeans on their legs overtop of running shoes. Over the boys' sweaters were jerseys, mostly of the same purple and silver colour with the head of a bearded man wearing a golden crown on the front and a number and name on the back. One of the boys had pads strapped to his legs and a cloth breastplate tied over his chest and another pad on his right arm; his stick was a little different it was shorter than the others, but it was also wider nearer the base and completely straight as well.

"C'mon Jeff," one of the boys said to the one in front of the others, a boy who looked around seventeen with short jet-black hair that just slightly peeked out from under a red and blue hat, "we need another goalie."

"Curtis," the boy in front, Jeff, said as he glanced back to his right, "can't you play net?"

"I don't do net man," said the one whom Jeff had addressed. "You know that. I suck."

"Shit," Jeff muttered under his breath. The girl gave him a look as she waited, though she was chewing her bottom lip. "Why'd my stupid brother Tyson have to up and ditch us like that?"

"Who called him anyway?" another boy, this one named Mike, asked.

Jeff gave him a confused and slightly surprised look as he said exasperatedly, "I don't know! He wouldn't tell me! But he left all his stuff here and told me to just find someone to play net!"

"It's 'cause we were kicking his ass," laughed another one of the nine, a light-blue haired one named Jessie. "He was letting goals in left, right, and centre."

Jeff grumbled, then looked at the girl again. He would admit that he really didn't have much of a choice. No one besides his brother and Ed could play net, and they needed another goalie if they wanted to keep playing. Doubt was etched into his face as he looked at her, since she'd have to replace his brother, but then again, Tyson _had_ been playing really poorly today; his mind had to be somewhere else completely. Why else would he have looked so relieved when his cell had started to ring and he'd rushed away, leaving his pads and stick behind?

"Just let her play," Ed whispered.

Nodding slowly, Jeff addressed the girl. "You any good in net?" he asked, jerking his head at one of the two white-netted and red-posted nets that they had standing in the middle of the street.

She smiled and shrugged. "Dunno, never played before," she answered. He groaned, and it looked like she felt compelled to continue as she came onto the street from the sidewalk, where she'd been watching their game for the last couple of minutes before Tyson had left. In fact, it had actually galvanized him and his friends into playing harder; better, now that they had had a pretty girl watching them play. "But," she added, "I have played keeper for my friends for years as they practiced, so it shouldn't be too much different."

"Keeper?" asked Ed. "What do you mean Keeper?"

"That's the person who defends the net in blitzball," she answered. "I'm from Destiny Islands," she added at the confused looks they gave her.

"Destiny Islands?" Jeff asked. Something tweaked in his memory as he looked at the girl, and he figured that it was something pretty important. "What's your name again?"

"Samantha," she answered quickly. The blob and tiny fire dragon thing looked at her, and the dragon started to hiss. She looked back at it and made a rasping noise. Truthfully, Jeff was more than a little bit spooked by that, but he shook his head as she looked back at them with a satisfied smile. The girl was very pretty after all.

"Close enough Sam," he said, "can we call you Sam?" She nodded her head. "You know, you look a lot like Prince—"

"I get that a lot," she said tiredly, though she still had a humourous smile on her face. Nodding back, Jeff signalled.

"Ed, go help her get into Tyson's pads."

"Sure," said the other goalie. "C'mon Sam, this way."

"You're going to want to take that jacket and those snow pants off," said Brian, the left defenseman on Jeff's team. "You'll roast otherwise." A cool wind started to blow, sending a bit of the snow that was piled up on lawns beside the sidewalk and road into the road. The sun was shining brightly, but even it couldn't warm the cold stone up much.

"But I'm cold now!" Sam protested.

"Well you're going to sweat a lot, even if you are just standing around in net," Ed told her. "You've got to keep moving, always searching for that damn ball so that you can block it. Don't take this the wrong way, but would you like help getting the jacket off?"

She grinned. "Moving a little quick there Ed? My boyfriend certainly won't like it if he hears another guy was undressing me." The other goalie blushed and backed off while all the others chortled. "No, it's okay, I can get my jacket off myself." She brought her right hand up to the zipper and pulled it down. Immediately she started to shiver as the sweater gave way to her thick red sweater underneath, and the blob hopped off of her shoulder and she wrapped the blob up in the jacket.

"There you are Minyamon," she said softly, "nice and cozy."

The blob chirped, "Minyamon!" and Samantha smiled and carried the jacket and blob over to the sidewalk she had just vacated. She looked towards the little dragon made of flame that was fluttering in the air close to her left shoulder, and rasped something. The dragon nodded its head and flew up to her raspberry beret and settled down right in the middle of it. Samantha turned back towards the group of boys and started heading for Ed at the nearest net again.

Jeff couldn't help but stare. He could see that her left arm was in a cast underneath her sweater, and her arm was held in a sling. She could command some strange fire creature and had a little glowing yellow blob for a pet, and she was injured and thought that she could play as a goalie? What was this crazy girl from Destiny Islands going to do next? Reveal that underneath her snow pants she was wearing a skirt?

Fortunately she was wearing jeans under her snow pants, but her teeth were already chattering from the wind and cold air. She really mustn't be used to this weather at all, because Jeff knew that even though it was a little chilly, it wasn't bad, and they'd warm right up again as soon as they started playing. Neil and Devon, better known as 'Twitch' or 'Twitchy' to his friends, were already passing the orange ball they substituted as a puck back and forth.

"Are you sure you want to play net Sam?" Ed asked as she knelt down into the pads. Her face twitched in disgust and winced at the cold as her jeans pressed against the now slightly icy backside, since some of Tyson's sweat had gotten into them. "I mean, you won't be able to use your glove with you arm broken like that."

"Hm? My arm?" Samantha asked. She laughed. "Don't worry about my arm. It's healed." She raised the limb up above her head in its hidden cast, and then slammed it onto the frozen road.

They almost weren't able to tell what had shattered, the cast or the road?

Sam gave them the answer when she raised her arm up and straightened it. She stretched the cuff of her sweater with a finger from her right hand and then shook the broken pieces of the pink cast out from underneath. Jeff and most of the others looked at each other in astonishment. She'd just shattered a cast that had kept her broken arm immobilized in a single hit against the road! And she didn't seem to be in any pain and was now moving her arm around in a few exercises to make sure that it was completely healed!

She smiled, rotating it around. "Yeah, this feels nice. Good thing I switched out my regular potion for a Hi-potion this morning and then cast another cure spell while no one was looking. It might not have healed until tomorrow otherwise."

And she drank _potions_ and used _magic_? Desire to know this badass beauty better and find out just who the lucky guy who'd gotten her first was filled all nine of the boys. And maybe, just maybe, she'd have some hot friends who were single.

Samantha shivered as she fitted her catcher's glove onto her left hand and then put the blocker over her right forearm, in the same place as Ed's. "Is this right?" she asked.

He nodded. "Perfect. Now we're just going to put that chest protector on you and you'll look the part." He smirked. "Hope you're good though, Alex and Twitchy were tearing Tyson apart earlier."

"We'll see," Samantha answered with a smile. She stood up, a little awkwardly since she obviously wasn't used to the added weight of the pads on her legs, and grabbed Jeff's AWOL brother's stick. "Alright boys, let's see what you've got!"

"Let's go!" Neil yelled, tightening his grip on his stick and rushing back to the centre, his stick already reaching for the orange ball.

"Hey hold up!" Ed shouted as he started hobbling. "I'm not back in my net yet!"

"Your loss!" Neil laughed. He got the ball on his stick and started rushing up the road with it with a large grin on his face. He took the shot, the orange ball quickly arcing into the white netting at the back. "GOAL!" he yelled, raising his stick to the sky and sauntering around. "That's five to two gentlemen, we're having a comeback."

Jeff laughed while Todd scoffed, "Doesn't count. There wasn't a faceoff!"

"So says the D who wasn't quick enough to stop me," Neil mocked.

"I ain't no Bobby Ore."

Samantha laughed in net while Ed got back into his and fished the ball out with his stick. "Okay guys, can we start for real now?"

A few laughed and nodded and Jeff quickly went by her. "Just remember Sam, keep the ball out of the net, and I don't want any sissy shrieking or running away because they're shooting at you."

Samantha raised an eyebrow. "You think I'm going to run away like a pansy?"

Wisely realizing that with the look Sam was giving him anything he said would be a mark against him, Jeff just humbly smiled and said, "We've had a few girls before who stopped playing net after the first two shots because they didn't like having a frozen ball whacked at them."

"Don't worry," Samantha assured him, "I'm not running." Nodding, Jeff went off to his place at Neil's left side.

"We all ready?" Jessie asked, standing across from Neil as his own team's centre. The ball was now between them. When all the nods came back, he said, "Go!"

The scuffle started right off the bat, Neil and Jessie fighting over the ball for a tense second before Jessie was able to shove Neil aside and push out past him. Brian and Mike converged on him from their defensive positions in front of their net, and Jessie flicked the ball back and to his left. Alex picked it up easily on his stick and stopped for a second. At the moment, he had a clear shot for Sam's net, Mike _just_ too far out of way to deflect the ball away. Alex wound up, and fired.

Samantha cleanly saw it coming, her eyes having followed the ball the whole way there from the faceoff. Her right arm was quick as she raised it to the proper height, and she felt the slight blunt impact of the frozen ball hitting her blocker. It dropped back to the cold road, and Sam lowered her stick and quickly shot it off, down the road and towards Jeff on the left side.

He smiled under his hat as the ball reached him. The first test for their new goalie, and she'd passed it perfectly. Maybe she really did know what she was doing. He got the ball on his stick and ran forward, seeing George coming up in front of him and Jessie moving to intercept on his right side. He shouted and made a pass across the road to Curtis, but it struck Jessie's shoe and bounced off. Jessie grabbed it up with his stick and reversed direction, sending the ball to Alex. It just made it past Neil and Alex was able to get a stick on it even as its speed outstripped his own. He put on a burst of speed and reached the ball, just getting control of it as he dodged Mike and went behind Sam's net. Brian was in the way to Twitchy, so he quickly passed it off to his centre.

Jessie met the ball with a one-timer the instant before Neil could get there, shooting through the slight screen that Brian and Jeff were making. Jeff gulped. Jessie's one-timers had always been trouble for Tyson, and when they hit Tyson would always be sporting a bruise for the rest of the week. Jeff barely saw the ball moving at all.

Samantha's glove came up and snatched it right out of the air before it could even think of entering the top left corner of the net. The nine boys all reacted in excited awe, Twitchy even going, "Whoa!" and laughing.

Samantha then made a mock swear and waved her gloved hand up and down. "Yow! That one stung," she said, smiling and letting out a faint peal of laughter.

Several smiles went her way, as well as Jeff's. "Hey Jeff," Neil told him, "I think you'll have to tell your brother he's been replaced." Sam dropped the ball and hit it with her stick. Neil and Jeff moved quick to get it, but Curtis beat them to it and rushed down the road towards Ed's net. He stopped short, finding himself being blocked by Todd, and passed it backwards to Neil. He got the ball easily, and gave it to Jeff. Jeff passed it back, and Neil fired before any of the other forwards could get in front.

Ed dropped down, blocking the five-hole with his pads, and the ball bounced off. Unfortunately for him, it bounced off to Curtis on the side, and he sent the ball up and over Ed's shoulder to hit the inside of the crossbar and bounce into the net.

"GOAL!" he shouted, crowing while the other five people on his team cheered.

-A-D-

They continued playing for another hour, and by the time they were done their cheeks were ruby red and their fingers and toes were frozen stiff, and Samantha was shuddering with cold. She'd only let in one goal, even going so far as to block one frozen shot with her face, and Neil's squad had rallied around their new goaltender and put three more in the net behind Ed after Curtis'. They lost by one, but all of them agreed that if Sam had been in net since the start that it would have been a rout for Jessie's side.

"Thanks Plato," Samantha said as the little flaming dragon up in her beret shot puffs of fire from its mouth to warm their fingers and ears. The dragon rasped something at her in a mild hiss, and she started to stroke its head with a finger. It began to croon, and Sam put her jacket back on and hugged the yellow blob close while slinging her snow pants over her shoulder. "Hey, thanks for the game guys. It was really fun."

"Oh no problem," Alex said. "Be sure to come by again; we'll kick Tyson out of net for you any day."

"Actually, could I get you phone numbers?" Sam asked.

Jeff's face instantly brightened. Forget that she said she had a boyfriend, she wanted his number! "Sure!" he said, giving it to her along with the others. Samantha wrote them all down, and then checked the time.

"Oh crap!" she exclaimed. "I've gotta run! See you all later!"

"Bye Sam!" they chorused, watching as she ran down the road. "She totally digs me," said Curtis.

"In your dreams asshat," said Twitchy. "She's so going to call me up tonight and hook me up with one of her friends."

"Why you?" Ed asked, "Because you were the only one to score on her?"

"Of course," Twitchy replied. "I've got mad skills, that's why it went between her legs."

"That's what she said," Jeff quipped.

"Lol," Jessie said without a laugh. "Let's just get this stuff packed away."

-A-D-

A few hours later when it was getting close to five in the afternoon and the sun had nearly set, Jeff heard his house phone ring. Not even looking up from his bed, he let it ring and heard his mother downstairs moving to answer it. Her voice drifted up into his room, but he couldn't really make it out. Then he was able to hear her words as she called up to him. "Jeff! It's for you!"

Not bothering to hide his surprise, Jeff hopped off of his bed and put down the book he'd been looking at. "Who is it?" he asked as he came to his doorway.

His mother's voice conveyed her shrug and smile. "I don't know, but it's a girl."

_A girl?_ He thought quickly, heat rising to his cheeks as he saw the look on his mother's face. He rushed past her, feeling her watching his every movement. Grabbing the phone, he sat down on a chair and gave his mother a look. She left the room. "Hello?" he asked, placing the phone to his ear.

"_Hi Jeff. It's Sam."_

His eyes widened. "Oh, Sam! Hi! I didn't think that you were going to call, like, tonight."

"_Yeah,"_ she answered, _"but I found out that my family has a reserved box for Kings home games and since there's a game tonight I was wondering if you and your brother would like to come. I've already called about half of the other guys we were playing with and they've all said yes, as well as a few other friends of mine. Well, _they_ had to get permission, but that was a minor issue."_

This was almost too good. The pretty girl who was good in net was inviting him to see the Kings' game tonight, and when they were playing against the Ravens too! Oh, how he hated the Banora Ravens!

"Uh, just a sec," he said. Placing a hand over the mouthpiece, he called his mother. "Mom!"

"Yes Jeff?"

"Can Tyson and I go to the Kings' game tonight? The girl we got to replace Ty in net after he ditched us has a box and has invited me, Ty, and the guys," he explained.

"I don't know," his mother asked, appearing in the doorway. "Is she cute?"

"Yeah she's cute, but she says she's got a boyfriend," Jeff answered. "But who cares? Her family's got a box and the Kings are playing Banora tonight!"

"What time does she want you two there?"

"Uh…" he put his mouth to the phone again, "what time do you want me and Tyson to be there?"

"_Well, they say that the puck is supposed to drop at seven, so I suppose if you all could meet up at a quarter after sixish outside of the rink that'd be good."_

He looked to his mom again. "Around a quarter after six." She looked at the clock.

"It's five-o-one," she said. "You two had better get going if you want to get there in time. I'll give you some money for food."

"Thanks Mom," Jeff said. "We'll be there," he told Sam.

"_Great!"_ her voice chirped. _"See you then!"_ She hung up.

Putting the phone down, Jeff hollered into the house. "Hey Tyson!"

"Yeah?"

"Get your jacket! We're going to the Kings game!"

Thundering up from the basement came his older brother by a year, his own black hair askew a little. "You got tickets?"

"Better," Jeff returned. "The girl we got to replace you after you ran away has a box and invited us all."

Tyson frowned. "You replaced me with a _chick?_"

"She blocked a shot with her face and didn't complain, beyond the usual _'OW THAT HURTS!'_"

Tyson nodded, impressed. "Some girl."

-A-D-

When they arrived it was to see that nearly everybody else had already gathered in front of a lamppost close to the doors. "Who are we waiting for?" Jeff asked, looking around while Tyson tossed a paper bag containing the empty wrappers of their supper into a garbage can.

"Ed…"

"…Todd…"

"…and Curtis," said Neil, George, and Brian.

"And Sam," added Twitchy. Jeff nodded, and he and Tyson joined in on the small talk while they waited for the four missing persons to arrive. Within ten minutes, the three absent males arrived, and they all started to check their watches apprehensively. It was almost six-fifteen, and Sam hadn't shown up yet.

Six-fifteen came, and six-fifteen went. By six-twenty they were starting to get both worried and frustrated. "She's late!" Alex said. "If she doesn't show soon, we won't get anything!"

"We'll be in a box," Twitchy reminded him. "We won't _have_ to go into the concourse to get anything. It'll all be brought to us piping hot."

"Or cold," said the only one of them who was the legal drinking age of eighteen.

"Shut up Tyson. Mom told you not to drink tonight."

"Dang," he laughed.

Three people walked up to them, "Excuse me," one of the men said, "but are you all… Samantha's… friends?" The ten looked at the man who had spoken, trying to size him up and then thinking better of it when they saw that he was over six feet and had the look of a strong fighter about him. The man standing next to him was just shorter, but he carried an air of authority within his eyes of amethyst. The third wasn't even a man at all, but an anthropomorphic mouse with a mischievous look on his face, as if he knew something that the boys didn't.

"Yes…" Jessie said hesitantly. "Why…?"

"Welp, then it looks like you're coming with us," said the mouse. He turned around, and waved a hand over his shoulders. "C'mon." Glancing at one another, and then at the two tall men and the mouse, and then at each other once more, they moved forward.

"Wait," Ed said slowly as they walked, led by the three newcomers, "we don't have our tickets. How are we going to get—"

"Just come with us," said the large man who had first addressed us. "Do that, and you won't have any problems." Looking at each other again, this time more than nervous, the ten continued to comply. Whispers went between them as to just what was going on.

Nobody even tried to stop them or ask them any questions as they approached and went through the front gates, and the ten boys followed the three through the concourse, weaving in and out of the crowd and doing their very best not to get separated from one another or their guides. The smells and sounds of the booths of food and the vendors calling, "Beer here," "50-50," and "Pizza," were all around them. Finally, they reached a door numbered '21', and their guides stopped at the door. The ten boys looked at it with surprise. There were four guards outside of the door, two flanking each side, dressed up in steel breastplates with chainmail beneath. Bright helms were on their heads, spears in their hands and swords sheathed to their hips. On each breastplate was painted a white dragon in front of flames in front of a purplish-pink full moon all surrounded by roses, and red capes were on their backs.

The guards didn't even move as the mouse opened the door. He stood by it, waiting patiently. Jeff glanced around, not one of them seemed like they were ready to go into the booth. "Well?" the mouse asked. "Aren't you going to go in?"

Somebody pushed Alex, who had been standing in front, and he moved in first, rubbing his shoulder slightly and scowling behind him. The rest followed. Jeff stopped and looked around with wider eyes as soon as he entered. The inner room in this booth was massive, almost twice as big as his living room. In it stood a sixty-two inch spherevision set, a badass stereo system, an air hockey table, three maroon couches, a bar with a grill and oven, and even a full coatroom! There was a bartender behind the bar, currently pulling a fresh pizza out of the oven, and there were two people playing air hockey while a few others were watching the pregame show on the SV from the couches. A couple more could be seen out through the sliding glass door already sitting in their beyond comfortable seats at the neutral zone. The small yellow blob that they'd seen with Samantha when she'd been watching them was also sitting on the countertop of the bar, nibbling on something that looked like a breaded mozzarella cheese stick.

"Yeah!" crowed a blond who was playing air hockey as the sliding green puck plunked into his opponent's goal. "Suck it!"

"Shut up Hayner!" his opponent growled intensely. "I'll get you for that!"

"Sam?" Jeff asked, staring at the blond's opponent. Both the blond and the one across from him looked up, and the auburn-haired girl wearing a red sweater and blue jeans with a raspberry beret carrying a tiny flaming dragon on her hat turned around.

She smiled. "Hey guys," she said brightly. "Come in, have some pizza. Welcome to my family's boo—Rikku!" she wheeled around. "What did they just say about the Furies!"

"Huh?" asked a blonde girl sitting on the couch. "Oh, they just said that they beat the Stormbringers last night."

"Yes!" Sam cheered, pumping her fist. "Furies rule!"

"Uh, Sam?" questioned Twitchy as the door closed behind them, the two men and the mouse coming through the door last and slowly moving their way through the group of ten boys. "What's going on?"

She didn't answer him and instead turned to the men and mouse. "Thanks for fetching them King Mickey, Master Garda, Ovan."

The mouse laughed even as Jeff's eyes went even wider. "Aw, no problem."

"Hey, what's up with them?" asked the blond Sam had been playing air hockey against. "Why are they acting so freaked out?"

Sam smiled at him. "Oh, that's because I haven't told them yet." The blond's eyes narrowed.

"Told them what?" he asked.

"If you could tell us Sam," Jeff started, "we'd really like it."

She giggled slightly. "Okay, so it's like this," she said, leaning back against her side of the air hockey table and running a hand through her hair. She turned her head slightly, finding the puck digging into her back, and extracted it. "So, I didn't really tell you the truth when I said that my name was Samantha. I didn't want you thinking that I'd be a delicate flower or something, or that I was crazy for wanting to play a sport I didn't know, or that you'd all get in a load of trouble for something like this," she pointed to the bruise that was forming on her right cheek from where she'd taken a shot to the face.

The lights went on in Jeff's head. "Oh Light…" he muttered, and he wasn't the only one. Her resemblance, taking potions, the magic reference, guards outside of the door, comfortably addressing the King of Disney Castle and the Marquess of Ramius…

She looked up at them from the yellow-green puck she'd been examining. "My name's not Samantha. It's actually Lady Kairi Keila Talerith, the Legendary Crown Star Wielder of Light, Dragon Knight and Princess Royal of Radiant Garden."

They were all silent for at least ten seconds before Ed spoke up. "Well, no wonder you were so badass earlier."

She laughed, and the tension broke. All of her friends that they didn't know began to laugh as well, and soon they were engaging in slightly awkward small talk. "So if you're really Princess Kairi," Jeff said to 'Sam', "then that would make your boyfriend…?"

"Sora, yeah," she laughed, smiling at the mention of his name. She sighed. "Wish he was here right now."

"I guess that means I can give up entertaining any thoughts of stealing you away from him then," Jeff added.

Kairi grinned at him. "Well, you can try… if you have a death wish that is." She laughed again at the look on his face and turned around, swiftly placing the puck on the table. _BANG!_

"Whoa!" Hayner shouted, trying to get his pad onto the table in time and failing, the puck going into his goal with a _plunk_. "Hey—Kairi! Not cool!" She pointed at the score, showing that it was now five-three in favour of Hayner.

"Told you I'd get you for that one," she reminded him.

"I'm going to brave sounding like an idiot," Twitchy called, "but is any girl in here single?" Paine and Rikku raised their hands, along with a girl with shoulder-length golden-brown hair named Kia.

Kairi looked up. "Selphie, Yuna, you two are single! C'mon! These boys need people they can date!"

"It's complicated," Selphie and Yuna returned simultaneously. Selphie glared at Yuna while the mocha-haired Gullwing simply cast her eyes downward in a slightly submissive gesture. The brunette from Destiny Islands looked surprised at Yuna's lack of open hostility. Considering that the last time they had confronted each other about Tidus both of them had drawn weapons, Yuna had screamed 'Time to die bitch!' in Al Bhed, and had even fired a shot that Selphie's shield had fortunately caught before Sora had stepped in and stopped them, Yuna's meek behaviour was quite the reversal. Selphie glanced at Tidus, and he grabbed a slice of pizza quickly and wisely left to go outside with Wakka and Pence.

"Hmph," Hayner smirked. "Tidus is lucky, he's got two girls lusting for him."

Olette poked him in the side. "Hey! Am I not enough?" Olette asked in a teasing tone.

"Mm, depends," Hayner replied, "can you rub my shoulders for a second? We moved a lot of stuff today."

"Oh, poor baby," Olette replied, and she started rubbing. Then she stopped. "Done."

"Wha—? Olette!"

"Hey, you asked for a second, so I gave you a second. If you wanted it to be longer, you should have specified, Sergeant Garneky."

"Fine then. PFC Forrest, please give me a longer shoulder massage."

"Hm…" Olette began. "Should I wait until after you and Kairi finish your game, or should I start now?"

"Uh… you can wait," Hayner told her.

"No, do it now Olette!" Kairi said. She swung her pad at the puck and set it bouncing against the boards. Olette obeyed the order of her sex and began massaging Hayner's shoulders, and the distraction seemed to be working well.

Jeff laughed and shook his head before going out with some pizza to start trying to get to know that Tidus person. Even though she was his princess, she was still that teenager he'd met earlier.

-A-D-

_**May the Grace of the Valar Protect You**_

_Shire Folk_


	6. Not As Easy As It Looks

_Well, I'm glad that you guys enjoyed the last one, so I'm going to give you my last update for the summer. I hope that you'll enjoy it too._

_Disclaimer: You know what, Kairi, why don't you do this one?_

_(Kairi turns her head away stubbornly)_

_Shire: "Kairi… I'm waiting."_

_Kairi: "No."_

_Shire: "Kairi…"_

_Kairi: "You made me take a frozen road hockey ball to the face! That fricking hurt Shire!"_

_Shire: "Kairi…"_

_Kairi: (Grunting) "Fine. Shire Folk doesn't own me. There, that's all you're getting out of me, now go on and laugh at my expense for your own amusement."_

-A-D-

**Garden of Snow and Ice**

Not As Easy As It Looks

Eating breakfast Thursday morning, Kairi watched highlights of the Kings' game she had gone to the previous night. Deciding against dining in her own dining room, she was eating her bowl of cereal in the company of some of the servants of the castle in the same common room where she had witnessed the news report of her snowball fight and snow castle.

"I could do that," she declared suddenly. The servants, the tiny baby digimon Minyamon on her shoulder, and the tiny flaming dragon Plato perched on her raspberry beret, all looked at her inquisitively. Some of the servants didn't really appear like they wanted to speak, considering that what they had just watched was a replay of Kings' defenseman Howard Maags blasting a shot through the screen to enter Ravens' goalie Belfour's net just underneath his left arm to score the game winning goal with a final score of 3-1.

One gathered the audacity to reply with sarcasm. "Yeah, I'm sure you could Your Highness," said Arnold, one of the male servants. "I'm _sure_ you could score on a professional goalie who has spent his life honing his skills."

The other servants all looked at him in shock, as if he'd just asked to be fired. Kairi only laughed though, easing their worries. "No, not that. I mean skating."

They all gave her blank looks for a moment. "What? Skating?" Kensworth asked, glancing down at Kairi as she sat on the couch with her bowl in her hands.

"Yeah, skating," she answered. "Sora does it all the time in his Wisdom Form, and Riku and Selphie make it look so easy on their rollerblades. I want to go skating today."

"Princess Kairi, might I remind your attendance at the launching of the _Starlight_ and the speech you are supposed to give her?" asked her head steward.

"I know, I know," she remarked. "I mean after that. I want to go skating _after_ we bid bon voyage to the _Starlight_."

"Well I'm sure that that can be accommodated," Kensworth said. "Are you sure that you should be skating instead of reviewing the documents from the meeting you rushed out of yesterday when Minyamon's digiegg hatched?"

Kairi gave him a pained look. "Kenny," she explained, using the name she used to call him when she had still been a little girl, before Ansem the Wise had stolen her away to the safety of Destiny Islands during the raid on the castle that had seen to the murder of her parents and older brother, "in a day or so Sora's going to be back, and when he sees that my arm and ribs are all better he'll whisk me off my feet and into a gummi ship or a portal of light and I probably won't see the Garden again for months, with the closest thing to it being one of our ships or some world we might go to in order to defend it. Since I'm going to be launching the _Starlight_ today, and I don't know exactly when Sora's going to be back, I'm not going to be spending what's left of my time here in an official capacity as Princess Kairi. I've also got cookies to bake and ice tonight for my trip to Keila Elementary School tomorrow."

Kensworth nodded his head at what the auburn-haired Keyblade Wielder was saying. "Very well, I'll see to it that we find you a nice-fitting pair of skates." All he did was look at one of the servants, and Arnold quickly got up and left the room. Kairi smiled. She was going to have a fun afternoon.

-A-D-

She was having a terrible afternoon.

The skates fit alright, but Riku and Selphie had never told her the slightest thing about rollerblading. It all looked so easy standing on the sidelines, watching her friends on the road or watching the Kings and Ravens play the previous night. Just keep your balance and push off with your legs, right?

WRONG!

"Whoa!" Kairi shrieked, her arms flailing about behind her as her feet _suddenly_ moved forward while everything above her waist decided to stay put. She landed hard on her rump, which she was pretty sure was going to have a healthy amount of purple on it by the end of the day like her right cheek already did. Her jeans were already frozen and it didn't matter that she was in an indoor skating rink, the nip of the cold air was already making her nose, hands, and ears a little numb while her chest felt so incredibly hot beneath her ski jacket.

She tried to get back up again, but almost immediately slipped and fell back down, other skaters making sure to avoid the obstacle on the ice. Nobody had ever told her just how difficult it was to keep your balance when you were standing on a sheet of slippery ice with the only thing connecting you to it was a razor-thin blade of metal, or just how _hard_ it was to get back up without accidentally doing the splits.

Huffing and puffing, Kairi somehow managed to get back to her feet, and she waved her arms as she suddenly felt her balance slipping while her skates moved forward without her consent. She pushed and bent forward, nearly sticking her butt into the air while her legs decided that they'd rather stay locked and rigid in a standing motion rather than trying to move her. Her hands scrabbled at the boards and Plexiglas as she happened to get near to it and Kairi steadied herself while heaving in large lungfuls of air.

Forget fighting the forces of darkness with the odds stacked against you to ridiculous levels, _this_ was challenging; _this_ was scary! Kairi glanced behind her as she concluded that she had finally come to a complete stop while resting against the boards, and she took great, great care that she didn't change her centre of gravity or shift her weight around by any noticeable amount while she patted the snow off the bottoms of her jeans. For a second there she was abashedly glad that she'd been wearing long pants instead of a skirt (though she'd have to be crazy like Naminé to wear a skirt when it was this cold), because otherwise when she'd stuck her rear end in the air a few seconds ago she was sure that anyone looking could have seen her…

Well her regular underwear was in the wash so what else was she going to wear, nothing? Kairi blushed as she talked to herself in her head. The thought of going commando was just too embarrassing to even consider.

She watched for a couple of minutes as people skated by her. There were couples with their hands held, people by themselves skating faster and faster and making sharp turns, small children skating backwards! She was being shown up by four-year-olds!

"What am I even doing?" Kairi wondered quietly.

A hiss came from atop the raspberry beret on her auburn-clad head. _"Attempting to skate, my Queen."_

Kairi glared upwards, even though she couldn't see the tiny flaming dragon on her hat. _"You know, you're not really helping Plato,"_ she said, her voice rasping and hissing in a draconic language that she didn't even realize she was speaking. It only came out when she talked to her familiar, and everyone around her always made some motion of discomfort when hearing the non-human sounds leave her mouth.

"_I am a fire elemental, my Queen, why would I know how to propel myself to my death on a sheet of cold ice with only a razor-thin piece of metal as my support?"_

Snorting, Kairi returned the reply with, _"Well you could at least give me some tips couldn't you?"_

"_Don't fall?"_ the dragon suggested in a deceptively innocent tone.

She knew he was mocking her. _"Very funny Plato. Well, let's see if I can stay up for longer than twenty seconds this time."_ Taking a deep breath, Kairi pushed herself away from the wall with her hands. The cool air passing against her face had a very pleasant feel, especially against the bruise on her cheek, but her momentum from her light push, since she hadn't wanted to go too strongly and overbalance herself, soon petered out and left her standing still on her skates. She began to wobble with every tiny movement, and a slow rise of panic began.

It wasn't long before the completely inexperienced skater made a mistake, one that had her falling down and hitting her tailbone. Plato hissed a quiet laugh from on her hat while Kairi massaged her bruised bum, feeling that a lot more than that was getting bruised as her time on the ice continued. Her ego, her pride, her self-esteem, it all went right down the toilet when she saw that same four-year-old wearing hockey gear just big enough for him skate past her, turning and skating backwards the whole time with just the barest of glances behind him.

Here she was, Kairi of Destiny Islands, the Legendary Crown Star Wielder of Light, a Knight of Radiant Garden, Wielder of the Keyblade, Princess of Heart, Apprentice of Garda, Chief Guardian of Destiny Islands; Crown Princess of Radiant Garden; Slayer of hundreds of Heartless; Vanquisher of Cho'kal, the Stone Golem; Victor at the Ford of Bruinen… and a _four-year-old_ was skating rings around her! _BACKWARDS!_

Her face burned as she fumed in frustration. "This is a _stupid_ pastime!" she muttered under her breath. "Gratz to the Kings and Riku and Selphie for making it look _so! Damn! Easy!_"

-A-D-

From a lounge just outside of the rink, watching through a window while sipping hot chocolate, Lord Ovan Ramius, Garda, and two members of the 8th Royal Guards (Trent and Namis to be exact), were watching her dismal progress. "How unsightly," Ovan remarked, shaking his granite-covered head and putting his amethyst eyes towards the table; he almost couldn't bear to watch any more of his goddaughter failing so epically at skating.

Private First Class Trent shook his head as well, watching her with embarrassment on his face. "I almost can't believe that Princess Kairi can't even skate. She can do just about anything."

"_Just_ about anything," Pvt. Namis repeated with a grin. She didn't know why, but she found this whole scenario more amusing than embarrassing. Kairi was getting up again, and struggled over to the rail. Marie Namis was almost surprised that nobody had stopped to help her yet, especially one of the boys skating around; Kairi sure didn't have an unappealing face or figure, even if that bruise on her cheek detracted from her appearance and the raspberry beret she was refusing to take off was clashing with her auburn hair. Looking at her, though, she could at least see that many thought the girl to be a lost cause, or were waiting for her to figure it out on her own.

The four in the lounge couldn't be the only ones watching as she fell forward, after a couple of tentative strides, with her butt sticking into the air after all.

"Minya…" Minyamon mumbled sadly from Garda's shoulder.

Garda suddenly laughed. "You're right Ovan, she is unsightly. But sometimes you have to look ridiculous when learning something new."

The Marquess of Ramius sighed, and PFC Trent replied, "Yes, but this is just painful to watch."

"Was it any less painful when you were first learning to walk?" Garda asked perceptively. He noticed Kairi getting up again.

His three companions nodded, agreeing with their most distant and faded memories of their days as infants learning to walk. "She's stubborn," Namis noted.

"She perseveres," Garda corrected her. "She will not let those skates defeat her. Her resolve was brought to the breaking point of despair when her partner fell to defend her, but now that Minyamon has hatched from her digiegg Kairi's fire has returned, and will continue to burn even brighter than before. Nothing short of death will stop those kids from winning."

"But surely you can't bear to see her hurt?" Lord Ramius asked sharply.

The Chief Guardian met the Marquess' stare for a good ten seconds before looking away and sighing. "It was that fire in her heart that set me on the path of training her. She is a sweet girl; kind, and willing to help those in need. This is her path, and I agree with her choice."

"Even if she—"

"I did not say that I don't feel anything when I watch her get hurt fighting!" Garda snapped back. "Seeing her fight Cho'kal has been the proudest and most terrifying moment of my life. I never took on apprentices before her, because I was confident that this very thing would happen."

"What thing?" asked Trent.

Garda turned an eye on Kairi again as she struggled with the skates. "That's not your business," he declared in a gruff tone, before striding away.

"Where's he going?" Namis asked. She gasped. "The skate rental!"

Lord Ramius sighed as he watched Garda head out. "I was there when she was born," he said.

"Milord?" asked Pvt. Namis while Trent looked at him curiously.

"I was named her godfather," he continued, resigned, "but that man's more her surrogate father than I'll ever be. I was there when she was born, but he watched her grow up and trained her. He's more her godfather than I."

"Then just be an even better one to her sister," Marie told him. Ovan gave her a look and she bowed her head, remembering her station. He thought of the blonde then, and then smiled at the thought of Naminé.

"That may be harder than it sounds," he answered unexpectedly. But then, what was a man with only sons to do when confronted with a daughter? He only hoped the Marchioness would come to like her as much as he did.

-A-D-

She pushed off from the boards again, keeping her balance and doing her best not to fall. She'd figured out the tricky part of staying up, now it was only a question of being able to push back with one leg and stay steady on the other before pushing that one back as well before returning to the other leg, all without falling down.

"Oof!" Hands splayed out, kneecaps hitting the ice, rolling over to the right side, Kairi was against the cold again, only having moved six metres forward from when she'd pushed herself off the boards.

"This is dumb!" she growled to herself. "What idiot came up with something so stupid like this, and then decided to go and make sports involving it?"

"_So why are you still trying so hard to skate?" _asked Plato while _Frosty the Snowman_ neared its end on the loudspeakers.

"_Because I refuse to go back and see these skates mocking me!"_ Kairi retorted. _"I know what they'd say if they could talk. 'Hee-hee, you can blow up a Large Body with a single fireball, but you can't stay up on a pair of skates'!"_

The four-year-old did another lap, a giddy smile on his face.

"_You're right, my Queen,"_ remarked Plato in a growl, _"the boy is beginning to annoy me too."_

"GIRL!"

The shout was nowhere near as loud as Kairi was used to it being, but it was certainly a lot closer than she expected. Off of her side, Kairi knelt down on the ice: her hands down on the ice, her knees digging into the tiny chips of frozen water that skates had nicked out of the sheet, the teeth at the fore of her skates grinding against the cold, and her head bowed.

"Yes Master," she automatically answered. Her face was neutral, even as she was aware of the eyes on her and Garda. Black hockey skates were laced to his feet, and they stood without a wobble.

_What's he doing out here, on the ice, with me? Can't he see all these people? This is so embarrassing. What could he be thinking? Has _he_ even skated before?_

He started to speak, and Kairi focused solely on it. "There is no shame in asking for help, Kairi." She looked up, and saw that he was extending his hand to her. The man had changed clothes. He wasn't wearing a white vest and shorts anymore, but a pair of black pants and a dark blue jacket. Kairi took the hand, and slipped a little bit as Garda hoisted her up, but she did not fall. "How sore are you?" he asked.

Kairi glanced back at her rump and grimaced. "Getting there…" she mumbled.

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear you."

"It's starting to get sore Master Garda," she repeated, louder this time. He extended his left hand this time, and in it was a wad of white cloth. Kairi instantly knew it to be padding.

"Take it and put it in," he told her. "I imagine that you want to be able to walk and sit down tomorrow."

Kairi blushed in embarrassment and made a squeak. She'd remembered the last time her bum had begun to hurt so much, when she'd _insisted_ that Sora spank her for being stupid enough to let herself get captured and making him worry. It had seemed like a good idea at the time; the next morning, not so much.

But even so, as she carefully backed away from the rink to the boards and pulled at the backside of her jeans to insert the padding against her slightly damp cheeks, it was just so embarrassing that her cheeks, all four of them, started to burn. When she was done Kairi looked back up at Garda, and he nodded and held both his hands out. "Come on," he told her, "take my hands and we'll go slow."

"Bu—but," Kairi began, ashamed, "I'll fall."

"Not while I've got you," Garda assured her.

A voice chirped, "Minyamon!" from his shoulder, adding weight to his words. Kairi looked at the baby digimon and smiled. That one word gave her the confidence to grasp his hands.

Garda pushed backward with his legs, and he started to go backwards while Kairi moved forwards. Her knees remained locked, and she simply drifted forward, glancing down at the cold, hard ice, afraid of falling down again now that Garda was with her. That thought almost made her fall again, and her feet slipped out from beneath her and her bum just skimmed the ice before her master's strong arms hoisted the Princess back onto her skates.

"You're tense, relax," Garda instructed. "You were so tense when we first crossed swords that your arms practically shattered when you blocked my first swing, remember?"

Kairi did remember, and noted that he was smiling slightly. That caused the corners of her mouth to twinge into a smile of her own. He'd been a lot warmer to her recently, and she couldn't say that she didn't like the change. Her knees slowly began to unlock, but she still didn't loosen the grip she had on his strong hands. It didn't seem as if he'd expected her to.

"That's it," he said calmly, "breathe in, breathe out. Nice and easy. Lean forward slightly, just a bit, now. Push out with left, push out with right. Keep holding my hands, keep looking at me. Push out with left, push out with right; go with the flow; back and forth, back and forth. That's it, nice and slow and easy. And turn…" he drifted off as they came to the other end of the rink, and he slowly turned while skating backwards guiding her.

Kairi's fears slowly started to leave her as he began talking to her again in that same calm voice. "And back and forth, and push out with left, push out with right. Keep breathing, nice and slow and easy. That's it. Sway with the movement. On ice and skates you are not the solid wall or the charging bull, you are the beautiful dancer I have seen ignite the battlefield with quick feet and darting Keyblade. You are fluid, you are movement; you are the graceful swan. Shall I let go?" he asked.

The question took Kairi by surprise, but she nodded after a moment, quickly amending, "After the next turn." He nodded in understanding, and switched from guiding her from in front to holding onto only her left hand and skating beside her. Kairi wobbled a little bit, but quickly caught herself and stayed up. They turned, Garda guiding her through the turn at the end of the rink, and when they came around he let go.

Panic surged in Kairi for a moment, but Garda's words were still in her ears and he was still beside her, reminding her. She stayed up, she moved correctly, she swayed slightly with the movements of her body, and she skated freely.

A huge smile threatened to break her face as she looked up at Garda, only one thought going through her excited mind. _I'm doing it! I'm DOING it! Look at me! I'm—Wa, wa, WAAA! _"WHOA OOF!"

"_Not quite the graceful swan or dragon, my Queen,"_ Plato said to her while she sat on the ice again. The padding had at least softened the blow, somewhat.

Garda sighed. "We're going to need a chair."

-A-D-

_So Kairi's learning to skate, and found that it's not as easy as our boys and girls in the NHL and the Olympics make it look._

_Anyways, this is the last chapter for Garden of Snow and Ice, and I'm signing off for Animethon 18! Hasta la pasta!_

_**May the Grace of the Valar Protect You**_

_Shire Folk_


End file.
